Crypto news

This week, the crypto industry faced a series of events that are reshaping the rules of the game. From Sam Bankman-Fried's ambitious plan to launch a new token directly from prison to Tether's bold strategy to circumvent European regulation, the market shows that even behind bars or under legal pressure, loopholes can be found. Let's break down the key trends setting the tone for the entire sector.

SBF's $100 Million Plan: Genius or Madness?

The founder of FTX, serving a 25-year sentence, is not wasting time. According to sources close to him, Sam Bankman-Fried is already making plans for life after release: he will need between $50 and $100 million in startup capital to launch a new crypto project, which he claims "everyone will flock to." Simultaneously, he has appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists. The community has revisited the topic of FTX's venture investments — stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, which peaked at $114 billion but were sold off by bankruptcy administrators for pennies. Most analysts agree: even if SBF is a genius investor, his reputation is destroyed by the illegal use of client funds. Regaining trust will be nearly impossible.

Tether vs. Europe: Bypassing MiCA Without a License

The European regulator ESMA has given crypto platforms until July 1 to obtain a license under the MiCA regulation. Tether deliberately opted out of this path, considering the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks a threat to its financial stability. Instead, the company chose an indirect strategy: investing in partners that already have legal status in the EU. Through them, fully legitimate stablecoins will be issued, allowing Tether to maintain its presence in the European Union market without direct subordination to local officials. However, the forced delisting of USDT will hit professional participants: market makers will have to split liquidity pools, complicating inter-exchange arbitrage and widening spreads.

US Exits the CBDC Race: Ban Until 2030

American lawmakers embedded a provision banning the issuance of a digital dollar into an affordable housing bill. This allowed them to bypass the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document. Reasons for fear: total surveillance of transactions, control over spending (programmable money with the ability to freeze without a court order, 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, and stablecoins become an alternative that the state is willing to tolerate.

Collapse of Meme Coins: Bubble Burst

Revenues of the Pump.fun platform have plummeted by over 70%. The platform allowed anyone to issue a token for a few dollars, leading to an explosive growth in the number of coins. However, nearly 96% of traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. To prevent a crash, developers announced the burning of tokens worth $370 million (36% of the supply). This reflects a massive process of capital redistribution: investors are broadly locking in losses and withdrawing liquidity from unregulated instruments, which major players view as gambling. The market is returning to basic rules — assets without fundamental value no longer work.

CME Group Defends Monopoly Through the Courts

The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is suing the regulator CFTC over permission granted to the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. The CME head appeals to investor protection, comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis. However, behind this lies a fight for monopoly: CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks. The logic is simple: if we control the indices, new instruments based on them must be traded with us.

Global Trend Toward Destroying 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 being promoted. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, governments are forcing the abandonment of end-to-end encryption. As Pavel Durov rightly noted, this will not stop criminals, who can easily create their own closed applications. Ordinary citizens will be affected, and weakening encryption will make corporate bank networks vulnerable to hackers. To preserve privacy, users will have to switch to decentralized services.

My Expert Opinion: These events show that the crypto industry is entering a phase of maturity, where old models (meme coins, unregulated stablecoins) are giving way to more structured solutions. However, Tether's and SBF's attempts to bypass the rules are a clear signal that decentralization and innovation will resist any attempts at centralized control. Investors should prepare for volatility, but also for new opportunities in the DeFi and private blockchain segments.