Crypto news

This week, the crypto industry faced a series of landmark events: from Sam Bankman-Fried's ambitious plans and Tether's strategy to bypass European regulators, to the ban on the digital dollar in the US and the collapse of the memecoin market. We break down the key trends.

Sam Bankman-Fried's Ambitions: A $100 Million Startup from Prison

The founder of FTX, serving a 25-year sentence for one of the largest financial frauds, is not wasting time. He told his cellmate that to "make serious money," he would need between $50 and $100 million in startup capital, and mentioned a crypto project that "everyone will flock to." Simultaneously, he appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents hired lobbyists. The community has again recalled FTX's venture investments (stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, Solana collectively worth $114 billion), which bankruptcy administrators sold for a fraction of that amount. However, most commentators agree: even if SBF is a genius investor, his illegal use of client funds makes restoring trust nearly impossible.

Tether vs. MiCA: Bypassing Rules Through Partners

The European authority ESMA announced that by July 1, all crypto platforms must obtain a license under the new MiCA regulation, or they must completely cease servicing clients from the EU. Tether's management deliberately refused to obtain a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks risky for financial stability. Instead, the company chose a strategy to bypass direct restrictions: it now invests in partners who already have legal status to issue fully legitimate stablecoins. Thus, Tether will indirectly maintain its presence in the EU market without direct subordination to local officials. Meanwhile, the forced delisting of USDT in Europe will hit professional market participants: market makers will have to split liquidity pools, cross-exchange arbitrage will become more complicated, and spreads will widen.

US Bans Digital Dollar Until 2030

The US is moving toward a legislative ban on the digital dollar until at least the end of 2030. The provision prohibiting the Fed from issuing a CBDC is embedded in an affordable housing bill—this packaging allowed it to overcome the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document. American lawmakers fear total surveillance of every transaction, 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 exempt from the ban. For the global CBDC race, this means the world's largest economy is officially exiting it, and stablecoins are designated as an alternative that the state is willing to tolerate.

The End of Memecoin Hype: Pump.fun Loses 70% of Revenue

Revenue for the Pump.fun platform has plummeted by more than 70%. The platform allowed anyone to issue their own token for a few dollars, leading to an explosive increase in the number of new coins, but ultimately nearly 96% of all traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. To prevent a price drop, developers announced the burning of tokens worth about $370 million (36% of the supply). The situation reflects a massive process of capital redistribution: investors are broadly realizing 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, forcing traders to return to basic rules and seek digital assets with real practical applications.

CME Group Defends Monopoly Through the Courts

The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, will sue regulator CFTC over its permission for the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. CME CEO Terrence Duffy formally appeals to investor protection (comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis) and the Dodd-Frank Act. Meanwhile, CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks on which futures contracts are built. Duffy combined investor protection and monopoly defense in the lawsuit. The logic goes roughly like this: we control the benchmarks, so new instruments on these indices must be traded with us. A similar pattern is observed with ICE, demanding "equal rules" due to the rise of the Hyperliquid platform.

Global Trend Toward Destroying Communication Privacy

The UK government is preparing a law that would completely ban the use of social media (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) for citizens under 16, while in France and the EU, an initiative to mass-scan personal messages on smartphones before sending is being promoted. A global trend is emerging: under the pretext of fighting terrorism or protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to give up the basic right to privacy. As Pavel Durov noted, the forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption technology (embedding backdoors) will not stop real criminals, as they can easily write their own closed applications. Ultimately, ordinary law-abiding citizens will be affected. Furthermore, weakening encryption systems makes corporate networks of banks and funds vulnerable to hacker attacks and data theft, and users will have to switch to decentralized services to maintain privacy.

Expert Opinion: This week clearly demonstrates that the crypto industry is entering a phase of intense regulatory struggle and power redistribution. Tether and CME Group show how major players use legal and strategic maneuvers to maintain control, while memecoins and SBF remind us of the risks of speculative bubbles and fraud. Investors should prepare for a more structured, but also more conflict-ridden, market.