Tether reserves, pressure on crypto business in Russia, and the hidden threat of Solana: key events of the week
This week, I highlighted five key themes that will shape market development in the coming months: stricter requirements for crypto companies in Russia, a historic audit of Tether, a critical vulnerability in Solana, a paradigm shift in the AI industry, and an existential crisis for bitcoin.
Russian banks tighten compliance
Russian financial institutions have begun requiring crypto companies to confirm inclusion in the Central Bank registry, which has not yet been created. This is classic de-risking ahead of September 1, when cryptocurrency settlements for foreign economic activity will transition from an experimental regime to permanent practice. Businesses will face an unprecedented level of bureaucratic burden, rising costs, and a real threat of legal liability for illegal exchange.
My assessment: the transition period has effectively begun ahead of schedule, and now the industry's key task is to turn chaotic manual checks into a transparent and predictable procedure for legal settlements.
Tether's first full audit
Tether has completed the first full independent audit in its history by KPMG US, receiving an unqualified opinion on the compliance of its 2025 reporting with US standards. Auditors not only verified the balance sheet but also physically counted the gold reserves. Total assets exceeded the company's liabilities by $6.81 billion, confirming the financial stability of the issuer.
It is important to understand: even an unqualified opinion does not provide indefinite guarantees, but for the stablecoin market, this is a tectonic shift toward transparency. Now, other major issuers will be forced to follow this standard, or they will lose the trust of institutional investors.
Solana on the brink of disaster
The Solana blockchain came within a step of a complete halt due to a routing failure at provider TeraSwitch. The simultaneous disconnection of validators controlling 28.83% of staked SOL brought the network dangerously close to the critical threshold of 33.34%, beyond which transactions cease to finalize. The issue was resolved in 33 minutes, but the incident exposed a fundamental problem—excessive centralization of infrastructure.
This is a serious signal for institutional investors, who are increasingly considering Solana as an alternative to Ethereum. The network must urgently diversify its validators, or the next failure could be fatal.
The new economy of artificial intelligence
The potential acquisition of startup Decart by Anthropic for $6 billion and personnel changes at Google have exposed the main problem of the AI industry—the colossal cost of model maintenance. Competition is shifting from algorithm development to a battle for GPUs, infrastructure, and inference optimization technologies.
In the long term, this radically raises the barrier to entry: only companies that can effectively manage product economics at scale will survive. This is no longer a race of technology, but a race of capital and operational efficiency.
Bitcoin's identity crisis
Bitcoin is experiencing a deep identity crisis. Miner revenue from fees has fallen to a historic low of 0.69%, and the hash rate is collapsing due to competition with AI for energy capacity. The paradox is that major funds like BlackRock are actively buying the asset, but bitcoin has lost its correlation with stocks and gold, failing to live up to its status as a "safe haven" during crisis shocks.
My professional opinion: bitcoin has outgrown its status as a speculative instrument but has not yet found its real macroeconomic role. Until it becomes a stable store of value or means of settlement, its volatility will continue to deter conservative investors, despite institutional support.
This is a shortened version of my analytical review. The full video version is available via the link below.