Crypto news

This week, the crypto industry once again confirmed its status as a battlefield of giants, where innovation, regulatory crackdowns, and personal ambitions are tightly intertwined. While the founder of bankrupt FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, plans a $100 million startup from his prison cell, Tether is demonstrating a virtuoso chess game with the European MiCA regulator. The US, on the other hand, is shelving the digital dollar at least until 2030. Let's break it down.

The SBF Empire: From Prison to Crypto Project

Sam Bankman-Fried, serving a quarter-century sentence for the largest fraud in crypto history, is not wasting time. According to information from his cellmates, he is already planning to launch a new cryptocurrency project after his release, for which he will need $50-100 million in startup capital. He has even appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists. The irony of fate: FTX's venture investments, including stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, now valued at $114 billion, were sold off by bankruptcy administrators for pennies.

My opinion: Even if SBF is a truly brilliant investor, he has forever tainted himself with the illegal use of client funds. Restoring trust in such a situation is a task bordering on fantasy. But who knows what a man who once built an empire on sand is capable of.

Tether vs. MiCA: A Strategy of Circumvention

The European authority ESMA has issued an ultimatum: by July 1, all crypto platforms must obtain a MiCA license or leave the EU. Tether, however, took a different path. The company's management deliberately refused the license, considering the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks as risky for financial stability. Instead, Tether is investing in partners who already have legal status, through which fully legitimate stablecoins will be issued. Thus, the company will indirectly maintain its presence in the EU market without directly submitting to local officials.

Forced delisting of USDT in Europe, if it does occur, would deal a serious blow to professional market participants: market makers would have to split liquidity pools, cross-exchange arbitrage would become more complicated, and spreads would widen.

The US Buries CBDC: Stablecoins as a New Alternative

The United States is taking a decisive step away from the digital dollar. A legislative ban on the issuance of a CBDC by the Federal Reserve System is embedded in the affordable housing bill, which allowed bypassing opposition. The ban will last at least until the end of 2030. American lawmakers fear total surveillance, control over spending, and the displacement of commercial banks. Private stablecoins, unlike government-issued ones, are exempt from the ban. This means the world's largest economy is officially exiting the global CBDC race, and stablecoins are becoming a tolerated alternative.

The Meme Coin Bubble Bursts: Pump.fun Loses 70% of Revenue

The hype around meme coins has subsided. Revenue for the Pump.fun platform has plummeted by over 70%. The platform, which allowed anyone to issue their own token for a few dollars, resulted in nearly 96% of traders either losing money or earning no more than $500. To prevent a price drop, developers announced the burning of tokens worth approximately $370 million (36% of the supply). This reflects a large-scale process of capital redistribution: investors are locking in losses, withdrawing liquidity from unregulated instruments, and returning funds to TradFi.

My conclusions: The practice of buying assets with no fundamental value is ceasing to work. Traders will have to return to basic rules and seek digital assets with real practical application. This makes the market safer, but also less volatile.

CME Group Defends Its Monopoly: Lawsuit Against Kalshi

The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, is suing the regulator CFTC over permission for the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. CME head Terrence Duffy formally appeals to investor protection, comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis. However, in reality, CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks on which futures contracts are built. The logic of the lawsuit is simple: we control the benchmarks, therefore new instruments based on these indices must be traded with us. A similar pattern is observed with ICE, which demands "equal rules" due to the growth of the Hyperliquid platform.

The Destruction of Communication Privacy: A Global Trend

The UK government is preparing a law that will completely ban the use of social media for citizens under 16. In France and the EU, an initiative is being pushed for mass scanning of personal messages on smartphones before they are sent. A global trend is emerging: under the pretext of fighting terrorism or protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to abandon their basic right to privacy. As Pavel Durov noted, a forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption will not stop real criminals—they will write their own closed applications. Ultimately, ordinary law-abiding citizens will be affected, while the corporate networks of banks and funds will become vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Analytical summary: Decentralized services are the only way to maintain privacy in a world where states are increasingly encroaching on personal data.