A $100 million prison startup, Tether's revolt against MiCA, and a CBDC ban in the US: how old rules are crumbling
This week, the crypto market is being shaken by several tectonic shifts simultaneously. From the ambitions of the convicted FTX founder to Tether's legal war with European regulators and the US's complete abandonment of the digital dollar. We break down the key events reshaping the global financial architecture.
Sam Bankman-Fried's Ambitions: A $100 Million Prison Startup
Sam Bankman-Fried, serving a 25-year sentence for the largest fraud in cryptocurrency history, is already making plans for life after release. According to sources from his circle, SBF told a cellmate that to "make serious money," he would need between $50 and $100 million in startup capital. He mentioned a certain cryptocurrency project that "everyone will flock to." Simultaneously, he has appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired professional lobbyists.
Notably, FTX's venture investments — stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, which were worth $114 billion at their peak — were liquidated by bankruptcy administrators for a fraction of that amount. This only underscores the scale of missed opportunity. However, despite SBF's potential investment genius, trust in him has been irrevocably destroyed: the illegal use of client funds is a line the community does not forgive.
Tether's Strategy: Bypassing MiCA Through Partners
The European regulator ESMA has set a deadline of July 1: all crypto platforms must obtain a license under the MiCA regulation or leave the EU market. Tether deliberately refused this license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks a threat to its own financial stability.
Instead of direct compliance, the company chose an elegant circumvention strategy: it invests in partners that already have legal status. Through them, fully legitimate stablecoins compliant with MiCA will be issued. Thus, Tether will indirectly maintain its presence in Europe without directly submitting to local officials. The forced delisting of USDT would deal a serious blow to market makers, complicating cross-exchange arbitrage and widening spreads.
The US Exits the CBDC Race: Digital Dollar Ban Until 2030
American lawmakers embedded a provision banning the issuance of a digital dollar (CBDC) into an affordable housing bill. This tactical move bypassed the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document. The ban is in effect at least until the end of 2030.
Congressmen's main concerns: total surveillance of transactions, control over spending (programmable money with the ability to freeze without trial, as in the digital yuan), and the displacement of commercial banks. Private stablecoins are exempt from the ban. This means the world's largest economy is officially exiting the global CBDC race, recognizing stablecoins as an alternative the state is willing to tolerate.
The Meme Coin Bubble Bursts: Pump.fun Loses 70% of Revenue
The revenue of the Pump.fun platform, which allowed anyone to issue a token for a few dollars, has plummeted by over 70%. Nearly 96% of traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. To prevent further decline, developers announced the burning of tokens worth approximately $370 million (36% of the supply).
This reflects a massive process of capital redistribution: investors are locking in losses, withdrawing liquidity from unregulated, speculative instruments, and returning funds to traditional finance (TradFi). The practice of buying assets without fundamental value has stopped working. The market is forced to return to basic rules, where only assets with real practical utility hold value.
CME Group vs. CFTC: Protecting Monopoly or Investors?
The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, is suing the regulator CFTC over its permission for the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. Formally, the CME head appeals to investor protection, comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis. However, the real underlying issue is protecting a monopoly.
CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks. The logic of the lawsuit is simple: "We control the indices, so new instruments based on them must be traded with us." A similar pattern is observed with ICE, demanding "equal rules" due to the growth of the Hyperliquid platform. This is a classic example of how traditional giants use regulatory levers to suppress competition.
Global Trend: The Destruction of Communication Privacy
The UK is preparing a law for a complete ban on social media for citizens under 16, while in France and the EU, an initiative for mass scanning of personal messages before sending is advancing. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism and protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to give up the basic right to privacy.
As Pavel Durov rightly notes, the forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption (embedding backdoors) will not stop real criminals — they will write their own closed applications. Ordinary law-abiding citizens will be the ones affected. Weakening encryption makes corporate networks of banks and funds vulnerable to hacker attacks, and users will have to switch to decentralized services to maintain privacy.
Expert Opinion: We are witnessing a classic process of "regulatory arbitrage" and power redistribution. Tether, by circumventing MiCA, demonstrates that global stablecoins can exist outside jurisdictions, while the US, by abandoning the CBDC, effectively legitimizes this model. At the same time, pressure on privacy and competition from traditional monopolies (CME) is a signal that decentralization remains the only real way to preserve financial freedom. The meme coin market, on the other hand, has shown that "hype without fundamentals" is a dead end. True value is returning to projects with real-world applications.