SBF's Ambitions, Tether's Strategy Against MiCA, and CBDC Ban: Weekly Market Digest
This week, the crypto industry once again found itself in the spotlight. From Sam Bankman-Fried's prison plans to Tether's cunning strategy to circumvent European regulations, events are unfolding rapidly. We also analyze the ban on the digital dollar in the US, the collapse of meme coins, and the struggle of traditional exchanges for monopoly.
SBF's Plan: A $100 Million Startup and a Presidential Pardon
The founder of FTX, serving a 25-year sentence for the largest financial fraud, is not wasting time. Sam Bankman-Fried confessed to a cellmate that he would need $50–100 million in startup capital to "make serious money." He is already discussing launching a new crypto project that, he claims, "will attract everyone." In parallel, SBF has appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists.
The topic of FTX's venture investments has resurfaced in the community—stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, which bankruptcy administrators sold for a fraction of their current market value of $114 billion. However, most analysts agree: even if SBF is a genius investor, his illegal use of client funds makes restoring trust virtually impossible.
Tether vs. MiCA: Bypassing Without a License
The European regulator ESMA has demanded that all crypto platforms obtain a license under the MiCA regulation by July 1, or face a complete halt in servicing EU clients. Tether deliberately refused a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks risky for financial stability.
Instead, the company chose a strategy of indirect presence: investing in partners that already have legal status. Through them, fully legitimate stablecoins compliant with MiCA will be issued. Thus, Tether will retain access to the EU market without directly submitting to local authorities. The forced delisting of USDT in Europe will hit market makers, complicating inter-exchange arbitrage and widening spreads.
US Bans CBDC: A Victory for Stablecoins
American lawmakers embedded a provision banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar into a bill on affordable housing. This allowed them to bypass the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document. The ban is in effect at least until the end of 2030.
The main concerns of lawmakers are total surveillance of transactions, 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 CBDC race, and stablecoins are becoming a tolerated alternative.
Collapse of Meme Coins: Pump.fun Loses 70% of Revenue
The revenue of the Pump.fun platform, which allowed token issuance for a few dollars, has plummeted by over 70%. Nearly 96% of traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. Developers announced the burning of tokens worth $370 million (36% of the supply) to prevent a price drop.
This situation reflects a large-scale process of capital redistribution: investors are locking in losses, withdrawing liquidity from unregulated instruments that major players consider gambling, and returning funds to TradFi. The practice of buying assets without fundamental value has stopped working—traders must now seek digital assets with real-world applications.
CME Group Defends Monopoly Through the Courts
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. CME CEO Terrence Duffy appeals to investor protection and the Dodd-Frank Act, but the real reason is defending a monopoly. CME holds exclusive licenses for major benchmarks, and the lawsuit effectively demands that new instruments on these indices be traded only with them. A similar pattern is seen with ICE, which demands "equal rules" due to the growth of the Hyperliquid platform.
Global Attack on Privacy: Backdoors and Bans
The UK is preparing a law that completely bans social media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) for citizens under 16. In France and the EU, an initiative is being pushed for mass scanning of personal messages before sending. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism and protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to give up their right to privacy.
As Pavel Durov noted, a forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption will not stop real criminals—they can easily 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.
My Expert Conclusion: This week demonstrates a key trend—the market is going through a phase of consolidation and transition to maturity. The ban on CBDCs in the US and Tether's strategy against MiCA confirm that stablecoins are becoming the dominant form of digital money. However, the collapse of meme coins and the legal battles of exchanges point to an inevitable tightening of regulation. Investors should focus on assets with real value and avoid speculative bubbles.