Crypto news

This week, the crypto industry once again demonstrates that the laws of physics don't apply here, but the laws of financial survival certainly do. While some are making plans for $100 million from a prison cell, others—Tether—are inventing a brilliant way to circumvent European rules without formally breaking them. Meanwhile, meme coins are bursting, traditional exchanges are suing over monopoly, and governments are preparing total control over correspondence. Let's break it down in order.

SBF's Ambitions: Prison Startup and $100 Million

Sam Bankman-Fried, serving a 25-year sentence for the collapse of FTX, is not wasting time. According to sources close to him, he is already discussing with a cellmate the launch of a new crypto project requiring between $50 and $100 million in startup capital. Simultaneously, he has appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists. The irony: FTX's venture investments (stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, Solana) are currently valued at $114 billion, but bankruptcy administrators sold them off for pennies. However, even if SBF is a genius investor, his reputation is permanently destroyed. Restoring trust after the illegal use of client funds is a task beyond even the most ambitious startup.

Tether's Strategy: Rebellion Against MiCA

The European regulator ESMA has issued an ultimatum: by July 1, all crypto platforms must obtain a license under the MiCA regulation or leave the EU. Tether has demonstratively refused a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks as risky for financial stability. Instead, the company has chosen a cunning strategy: investing in partners who already have legal status and issuing fully legitimate stablecoins through them. Thus, Tether will maintain its presence in the EU market without directly complying with local officials. But for professional market participants, this will create problems: market makers will have to split liquidity pools, cross-exchange arbitrage will become more complicated, and spreads will widen.

Digital Dollar: The US Exits the Race

The United States is moving toward a legislative ban on the digital dollar (CBDC) at least until 2030. A provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC is embedded in an affordable housing bill—a packaging that overcame the resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document. American lawmakers fear total surveillance of transactions, control over spending (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 are becoming an alternative that the state is willing to tolerate.

Meme Coins: The Bubble Burst

Revenue on 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 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 about $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. 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: Defending the Monopoly

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. However, the essence of the lawsuit is simple: CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks on which futures contracts are built. Duffy's logic: "We control the benchmarks, so new instruments 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.

Destruction of Communication Privacy

The UK government is preparing a law that will completely ban the use of social media for citizens under 16, while 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 give up the basic right to privacy. As Pavel Durov noted, the forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption (embedding backdoors) will not stop real criminals—they can easily write their own closed applications. Ultimately, ordinary law-abiding citizens will be affected. Additionally, weakening encryption systems 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: The market is going through a cleansing phase. Meme coins are dying, regulators are tightening control, and traditional exchanges are trying to maintain their monopoly. But it is precisely in such conditions that real innovations are born. Tether shows how to bypass rules without breaking them, and SBF proves that even in prison, one can make plans for millions. The crypto industry remains a battlefield where only the most cunning and adaptable survive.