Crypto news

This week I am analyzing several landmark events that are reshaping the landscape of the crypto industry. From the ambitions of the convicted FTX founder to Tether's strategic maneuver in Europe and the global trend toward destroying privacy, the market is experiencing tectonic shifts.

Sam Bankman-Fried: From Prison to a $100 Million Startup?

Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence, is already making plans for life after release. According to sources from his circle, he told a cellmate that he would need between $50 and $100 million in startup capital to "make serious money." He mentioned a certain cryptocurrency project that, in his words, "will attract everyone." Meanwhile, SBF has appealed to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists. The topic of FTX's venture capital investments has resurfaced in the community — stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana, which were worth $114 billion at their peak but were sold off by bankruptcy administrators for a pittance. Most observers agree: even if SBF is a brilliant investor, his crimes (illegal use of customer funds) make a return of trust virtually impossible.

Tether: How to Bypass MiCA Without a License

The European regulator ESMA requires all crypto platforms to obtain a license under the MiCA regulation by July 1, or face a complete exit from the EU. Tether deliberately declined to obtain a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks as risky for its financial stability. Instead, the company chose an indirect strategy: investing in partners that already have legal status. Through them, fully legitimate stablecoins will be issued, allowing Tether to maintain a presence in the EU without direct subordination to local regulators. However, the forced delisting of USDT in Europe will hit market makers: they will have to separate liquidity pools, complicating cross-exchange arbitrage and widening spreads.

USA: CBDC Ban Until 2030

American lawmakers embedded a provision banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar into an affordable housing bill. 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 reasons include fear of total transaction surveillance, control over spending (as seen with the digital yuan), and the displacement of commercial banks. Private stablecoins are exempt from this ban. This means the world's largest economy is officially exiting the CBDC race, and stablecoins are becoming a tolerated alternative.

The Collapse of Pump.fun: 96% of Traders in the Red

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 coins, but 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). The situation reflects a massive outflow of capital from unregulated instruments, which major players consider gambling, back into TradFi. The practice of buying assets without fundamental value has stopped working — the market is forced to return to assets with real-world applications.

CME Group vs. Kalshi: Protecting a Monopoly

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. The head of CME appeals to investor protection, comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis. However, the real underlying issue is monopoly: CME holds exclusive licenses for major benchmarks. The logic of the lawsuit is simple: "We control the indices, so new instruments based on them should be traded with us." A similar pattern is observed with ICE, which demands "equal rules" due to the growth of the Hyperliquid platform.

Global Trend: The Destruction of Communication Privacy

The UK government is preparing a law banning 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 they are sent. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism and protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to give up the basic right to privacy. As Pavel Durov rightly noted, a forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption will not stop criminals — they will write their own closed applications. Ordinary law-abiding citizens will be the ones affected. Furthermore, weakening encryption makes corporate networks of banks and funds vulnerable to hacker attacks. To preserve privacy, users will have to switch to decentralized services.

My conclusion: The market is clearing out speculative junk, while regulators and major players are rewriting the rules of the game. Tether shows how to circumvent strict norms, and the US shows how to kill CBDCs through political maneuvers. But the main trend is the attack on privacy, which will force the crypto community to seek new ways of protection. In the coming months, we will see who survives in this new reality.