SBI Crypto, the Bitcoin mining arm of Japan’s SBI Group, shut down its mining pool on July 31 after five years of operation, according to a customer notice signed by CEO Hiroaki Morita. The pool stopped accepting hashpower at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on July 31, or 22:00 UTC on July 30, and any hashpower submitted after that point would not count toward final payouts. As of June 30, the pool’s seven-day average hash rate stood at about 20.9 EH/s, equal to roughly 2.2% of the Bitcoin network, but that figure had already fallen about 64% over the month leading up to the shutdown. SBI did not give a reason for the closure and instead directed customers to Braiins, Luxor Pool, or NeoPool. The timing has drawn attention because Hashrate Index data shows Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool together recently accounted for about 60% of Bitcoin block production, with their share reaching around 64.8% in the week of July 20. If ViaBTC is added, the top four pools come close to 70%, reviving debate over mining concentration on Bitcoin.

SBI Crypto, a major Bitcoin mining pool in Japan, stopped its Bitcoin mining pool service on July 31. Before the shutdown, the pool’s seven-day average hashrate fell sharply, dropping from 16.222 EH/s on June 30 to 5.817 EH/s on July 30, a decline of about 64% over one month. At the same time, data from Hashrate Index showed that Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool briefly accounted for about 60.01% of Bitcoin block share on July 31. Even though SBI Crypto’s hashrate dropped substantially ahead of the closure, public mining pool data does not show where that hashrate ultimately moved. The information was cited by CryptoSlate and carried by Odaily.

Real-world asset markets kept expanding in the week covering July 24 to July 31, 2026, even as stablecoin settlement activity remained weak. Data from RWA.xyz showed on-chain RWA market capitalization reached $36.82 billion as of July 31, up 2.43% from a month earlier, while the number of holders climbed to 1.4469 million, a 40.81% monthly increase and the largest monthly gain on record. In stablecoins, total market capitalization was largely unchanged at $296.63 billion, but monthly transfer volume dropped 29.29% to $5.07 trillion, extending a sharp slowdown in on-chain settlement demand. Regulation also moved across several jurisdictions. South Korea advanced work on a comprehensive digital asset bill that would cover stablecoin issuance and exchange standards, while lawmakers are also set to review an opposition proposal to scrap a crypto tax scheduled for 2027. Kenya lowered the minimum paid-up capital requirement for stablecoin issuers by 40% to about $2.32 million, and Zimbabwe approved seven crypto and tokenization projects for its regulatory sandbox. On the industry side, the Bank for International Settlements-led Project Agorá completed a live cross-border payment test worth about $1 million across six currencies with five central banks and 28 commercial banks. In Europe, 10 financial institutions formed the Regulated Layer One cooperative, or RL1, to build tokenized asset infrastructure for regulated markets. Ondo Finance also introduced Ondo Network, a new execution layer that replaces the prior Ondo Chain direction.

A wide set of crypto, regulatory and macro developments emerged between July 29 and July 30. Binance rolled out European-style gold and silver options through its ADGM-regulated Nest Exchange, while Cardano wallet provider SecondFi said part of the recovered assets tied to its security incident had been transferred by a white-hat team to an EMURGO recovery fund address for transparent tracking. Bank of New York Mellon said it is moving core transfer agent recordkeeping onto blockchain for roughly $8.6 trillion in assets and 7.6 million accounts, with Baillie Gifford, BlackRock and Dreyfus among the first clients. South Korea’s finance ministry said it will curb leveraged ETF trading and raise related trading costs. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve kept the federal funds target range at 3.5% to 3.75% in a 9-3 vote, with three dissenters backing a 25-basis-point hike. Separate comments from SEC Chair Paul Atkins indicated the agency would write crypto rules on its own if Congress fails to pass the Clarity Act. Elsewhere, Polymarket launched an in-house funded research institute, Stripe was reported to be discussing a $10 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, Ethereum Institutional announced its first ecosystem funding round, Tether’s compliant stablecoin USA₮ went live on Celo, and Robinhood, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung and xAI released fresh business and earnings updates.

Tether’s compliant stablecoin USA₮ (USAT) has officially launched on the Celo mainnet, according to The Block. The move marks the token’s second mainnet deployment after Ethereum. Issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, USAT can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo. It can also be used to pay onchain gas fees through Celo’s fee abstraction mechanism. USAT first launched in January this year and currently has a market capitalization of about $185 million. The rollout extends the token’s availability beyond Ethereum while adding native functionality on Celo for issuance, redemption, and gas payments.

MARA Holdings CEO Fred Thiel said the same unit of electricity can produce much higher returns when deployed for AI infrastructure than for bitcoin mining, reinforcing the idea that power access has become the key strategic asset for mining companies. MARA already has more than 4GW of energy capacity and is working with Starwood Capital to convert roughly 1GW of existing mining sites into AI and high-performance computing facilities, with plans to expand that platform beyond 2.5GW. On July 9, the company also signed an agreement with HIF USA to acquire more than 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, Texas, with up to 2GW of interconnection capacity and a total price of as much as $600 million. Thiel also pushed back on a common misreading of his remarks: the often-cited 10x to 15x figure refers to AI facility construction costs per megawatt, not revenue. He added that mining is not going away, especially in regions with low-cost or surplus power, where it can still serve as an effective way to absorb electricity.

A short-lived fork appeared on the Bitcoin network on March 24 after Antpool mined block 941,881 at 15:49:35 UTC and Foundry USA produced a different version of the block 12 seconds later. The split briefly left two competing chains at the same height. ViaBTC then extended the Antpool version with block 941,882, while Foundry USA kept building on its own branch. Foundry USA went on to mine blocks 941,883 through 941,886 in succession, giving its branch the lead in cumulative work. Nodes later reorganized to the Foundry USA chain, which became the winning version of the ledger. As a result, blocks mined by Antpool and ViaBTC on the losing branch were orphaned. The miners involved lost the associated block rewards and transaction fees. Transactions that were not confirmed on the winning chain returned to the mempool and were later confirmed in subsequent blocks.

A new Crystal Foresight report says the stablecoin market contracted for the first time in nearly three years after reaching a record level close to $320 billion in May 2026. By July 14, total supply had dropped to $306.5 billion, down $11.5 billion over 90 days, or 3.6%. The report argues this was not a case of tokens moving between wallets or chains, and not a depeg event, but real redemption-driven destruction that sent dollars back off-chain. The decline was also highly concentrated. USDC, USDe, USDS, USDT and PYUSD accounted for nearly all of the drop, while each token fell for a different reason. Crystal Foresight links USDe and USDS weakness to lower yields, USDC weakness to softer DeFi collateral demand, and USDT’s small decline to strategic positioning outside MiCA and the GENIUS Act framework. PYUSD, meanwhile, was described as vulnerable to incentive changes. The report also separates gold-backed tokens from dollar stablecoins, saying the roughly $900 million decline in PAXG and XAUt reflected a pullback in gold prices rather than changes in stablecoin adoption. On the growth side, USDG, USD1, DAI and RLUSD expanded through subsidies, distribution, or infrastructure channels, though Crystal Foresight said not all of that growth should be read as organic demand.