Foresight has published a long-form essay by Bitget Wallet researcher Lacie Zhang tracing a 70-year line from the birth of the eurodollar market to today’s stablecoins and self-custody wallets. The piece argues that stablecoins are not a clean break from the past. Instead, they represent a new stage in the offshore expansion of the U.S. dollar, one that changes how dollar claims move rather than eliminating the traditional financial system behind redemption. Zhang revisits how Soviet and Eastern European entities moved dollars into banks in Paris and London to avoid the risk of account freezes in the United States, how post-Suez British policy helped turn those deposits into a lending market, and how U.S. regulation and later petrodollar flows helped that market grow from millions to trillions of dollars. The essay then uses the 1974 Herstatt collapse, the 2008 dollar funding squeeze, and the fall of LIBOR to show that offshore banks gained the ability to expand dollar credit but never captured final control over clearing, emergency liquidity, or pricing. The article closes by contrasting fintech apps, stablecoins, and self-custody wallets. In Zhang’s framing, stablecoins move dollar balances onto public blockchains while leaving redemption anchored to U.S. Treasuries, bank deposits, and legal claims. Self-custody wallets change something else: who controls the movement of assets.

Seventeen of the largest U.S. banks have said The Clearing House will build on-chain clearing and settlement for tokenized deposits, linked to RTP and CHIPS for round-the-clock operation. The article argues that this is not simply a blockchain story. It is a liquidity story, centered on netting and liquidity-saving mechanisms that let banks settle large payment flows with far less prefunded cash than a gross, real-time model requires. CHIPS, for example, settles about $2 trillion a day with roughly $96 billion of prefunded liquidity, versus an estimated $442 billion under transaction-by-transaction gross settlement, according to the figures cited in the piece. That contrast sits at the core of the stablecoin debate. Stablecoins can move in seconds, but they generally require 100% prefunding. The article says this tradeoff resembles RTP, which also gives up netting in favor of prefunded instant settlement. At the same time, stablecoins have gained traction in areas traditional rails do not cover well: Global South payment corridors, weekends, merchant settlement, and access to transferable dollars outside the U.S. banking system. The piece also argues that stablecoins are not inherently incapable of netting. What is missing is clearing infrastructure around par exchange, redemption, and multilateral net settlement. It points to firms including Better Money Company, Ubyx, Glacis Labs, Cycles, and Circle’s CPN as signs that a token-era clearing layer is beginning to take shape.

Coldcard has issued an urgent warning telling users to move bitcoin out of affected wallets immediately, saying the exploit campaign tied to a firmware flaw is still underway. The wallet maker advised users to update firmware based on device model, generate a new seed phrase, and transfer funds into a newly created wallet. Galaxy Research said on Monday that a suspected fourth wave of theft moved about 449 BTC from 709 addresses, pushing total losses from $89 million to roughly $114 million. Coldcard said the issue affects only certain device models and firmware versions, while parent company Coinkite noted that wallets created with the physical dice option are not exposed because their keys were generated outside the vulnerable code path. Ledger security specialist Vincent Bouzon said the incident reflects an implementation failure by one vendor rather than a failure of self-custody itself, and warned against shifting funds into software wallets or centralized exchanges out of panic.

MarsBit’s Weekly Editor’s Picks for July 25-31 gathers a broad set of market and policy readings across crypto, macro, AI infrastructure, tokenized equities, Ethereum staking, and platform risk. The roundup highlights a Federal Reserve meeting described as one of the most uncertain in recent years, with softer June CPI, weaker nonfarm payrolls, and lower oil prices arguing for patience, while sticky inflation, Middle East tensions, hawkish Fed remarks, and an unclear policy record from Chair Waller kept a hike risk on the table. The piece says markets had already paid for that risk. On regulation, the selection says the Clarity Act has reached the political equivalent of the final yard line, but its 2026 passage odds were cut to 30% because of limited time and Democratic objections to the current ethics language. It also notes competition for Senate floor time with other contested bills. Elsewhere, the roundup points to Lido’s migration of more than 8 million ETH, worth about $16 billion, into a new validator architecture after Pectra; ONDO’s 30% rise over three weeks as tokenized stock activity picked up onchain; and a string of AI and memory-market stories focused on credit risk, capital spending visibility, and how SK Hynix is being judged against already elevated expectations.

Aave said smart contract formal verification firm Certora has completed its review of Stable Vaults, covering contracts including StableVault, Funds Handler, Asset Registry, Allocator, and the IOU token. The protocol said the verification confirmed that the Solidity implementation matches Certora’s formal rules. Aave described Stable Vaults as an integrated solution designed for fixed-rate stablecoin yield and said it can be embedded into any financial product. The related audit report has also been released publicly, according to the project’s post on X. The update centers on contract verification and the publication of the audit materials, without disclosing additional rollout details in the post.

IOSG’s latest deep dive argues that Robinhood is no longer renting blockspace from someone else’s network. By launching its own Layer 2, the company now controls the rails for trading, settlement, collateral, yield and asset circulation, a move the report frames as a direct answer to Coinbase’s Base. Robinhood Chain was built for tokenized equities and broader real-world asset activity, yet its first wave of traction came from meme coins and AI agents rather than stocks. As of July 20, 2026, IOSG said RWA assets still accounted for only about 4% of total value locked. The report lays out a layered structure around the chain, including USDG as the main settlement dollar, USDe as a yield-bearing collateral asset, Wallet as the user entry point, and separate perpetual venues such as Lighter and Arcus. It also spends considerable time on the legal structure of Robinhood’s stock tokens, describing them as tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited rather than direct ownership of underlying shares. IOSG’s conclusion is that the infrastructure economics already make sense for Robinhood, but the unresolved question is whether meme-driven traffic can be converted into durable RWA activity and whether the company will eventually publish reserve proof for its stock token model.

Poolin Technology Pte. Ltd., once the operator of one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pools, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 22 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. The case also includes two U.S. affiliates, Lonestar Dream Inc. and Lonestar Taproot LLC. Court records show the group entered bankruptcy with more than $100 million in prepetition obligations and less than $10 million in assets. Poolin, founded in Beijing in 2017 by former Bitmain executives Zhibiao “Kevin” Pan, Fa Zhu, and Tianzhao Li, had once controlled nearly a fifth of Bitcoin’s global hashrate before expanding into lending and yield products through Poolin Wallet. The company’s troubles began in September 2022, when it froze withdrawals for Poolin Wallet and Pool Account users, citing liquidity issues during the broader crypto market crash. Instead of repaying customers, Poolin issued IOU tokens representing claims on real BTC, and those debts remain unpaid. In the bankruptcy case, roughly 11,700 wallet holders are owed $163.7 million. Poolin’s Texas mining and hosting business shut down on July 10 and is not expected to restart. The company is now seeking to sell two West Texas sites, with Thor CALAP LLC offering a $52 million stalking-horse bid for the physical mining infrastructure.

PANews’ July 24 daily roundup pulled together a wide set of crypto, macro, legal, and market developments, with whale activity around HYPE standing out across several on-chain updates. One large holder staked 2.785 million HYPE worth about $164 million through 20 wallets over 11 hours, while another whale moved 2.93 million HYPE, worth roughly $172 million, into Hyperliquid for staking. A separate entity also staked 1.49 million HYPE valued at around $88.2 million. PANews noted that one of the larger staking clusters may be tied to a16z, though that remains unconfirmed. Elsewhere, former bitcoin mining heavyweight Poolin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and plans to sell its Texas mining assets for $52 million. BitMEX, on the same day it announced it would shut down operations on Sept. 23, was hit with a class-action lawsuit seeking 622.66 BTC in damages over alleged fraudulent liquidations. In corporate and funding news, Stripe is reportedly in talks to acquire AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter in a deal that could reach $10 billion, while AI chip startup Etched closed a $300 million Series C at a $10.3 billion post-money valuation. BlackRock, Coinbase and seven other firms also launched a Bitcoin security alliance with a three-year, $15 million funding commitment for open-source developers.