A $100 million prison startup and Tether's strategy against MiCA: how SBF and USDT issuers are reshaping the crypto market
This week, my analysis focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried's grandiose plans, Tether's cunning strategy to circumvent Europe's MiCA regulation, and a legislative attack on the digital dollar in the US. Additionally, we examine the collapse of the memecoin market, traditional exchanges' legal battles for monopoly, and a troubling global trend toward destroying communication privacy.
Sam Bankman-Fried's Ambitions: A $100 Million Prison Startup
The founder of FTX, serving a 25-year sentence for the largest financial fraud, is already planning his life after release. As it became known, SBF confessed to a cellmate that to "earn serious money," he would need $50-100 million in startup capital, hinting at a cryptocurrency project that "everyone will flock to." Simultaneously, he appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, while his parents hired lobbyists.
The community has revisited the topic of FTX's venture investments—stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, collectively valued at $114 billion. Bankruptcy administrators sold them for a fraction of that amount. However, most experts agree: SBF may be a brilliant investor, but he committed unforgivable acts by illegally using client funds. Even if his words about a future project are not a joke, regaining trust will be nearly impossible.
Tether's Strategy in Europe: Circumventing MiCA Without Direct Compliance
The European authority ESMA has demanded that by July 1, all crypto platforms obtain a license under the MiCA regulation, or else they must cease servicing EU clients. Tether's leadership deliberately refused to obtain a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks as risky for financial stability.
However, 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 the EU market without directly submitting to local regulators. Meanwhile, the forced delisting of USDT in Europe will hit market makers, complicate inter-exchange arbitrage, and widen spreads, creating significant inconveniences for professional participants.
Ban on the Digital Dollar in the US: Private Stablecoins Win
The US is moving toward a legislative ban on issuing a digital dollar (CBDC) at least until the end of 2030. A provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC is embedded in an affordable housing bill—this packaging allowed overcoming the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document.
American lawmakers fear total transaction surveillance, 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 explicitly excluded from the ban. For the global CBDC race, this means the world's largest economy is officially exiting it, and stablecoins are becoming an alternative that the state is willing to tolerate.
Consequences of the Memecoin Hype: Bubble Burst
Revenues of the Pump.fun platform have plummeted by over 70%. This service allowed anyone to issue their own token for a few dollars, leading to an explosive increase in the number of new coins, but nearly 96% of traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. To prevent a price drop, developers announced the burning of tokens worth $370 million (36% of the supply).
The situation reflects a large-scale capital redistribution process: investors are locking in losses, withdrawing liquidity from unregulated instruments that major players view as gambling, and returning funds to TradFi. The practice of buying assets without fundamental value has stopped working. Traders must return to basic rules and seek digital assets with real practical applications, making the market safer.
CME Group Defends Its Monopoly: Lawsuit Against CFTC
The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, will sue regulator CFTC over allowing the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. CME head Terrence Duffy formally appeals to investor protection, comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis, and cites the Dodd-Frank Act.
However, it is obvious that CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks on which futures contracts are based. Duffy combined investor protection and monopoly defense in the lawsuit. The logic is simple: we control the benchmarks, so new instruments on these indices must trade with us. A similar pattern is observed with ICE, demanding "equal rules" due to the growth of the Hyperliquid platform.
Destruction of Communication Privacy: A Global Trend Toward Surveillance
The UK government is preparing a law that completely bans the use of social networks (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) for citizens under 16. In France and the EU, an initiative is advancing to mass-scan 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 the basic right to privacy. As Pavel Durov noted, forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption (embedding backdoors) will not stop real criminals—they can easily write their own private applications. Ultimately, ordinary law-abiding citizens will be affected. Additionally, 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.
My analysis: This week shows that the crypto market is entering a maturity phase, where only projects with real value survive. Tether's strategy to circumvent MiCA is a brilliant example of adapting to regulatory pressure, while the CBDC ban in the US could catalyze the growth of private stablecoins. However, SBF's prison ambitions and CME's legal battles remind us that old players do not give up without a fight.