Today's news tips:
BTCS plans to raise $100 million for strategic Ethereum acquisitions
Publicly traded GameSquare raises $8 million to launch Ethereum fund management strategy
U.S. national debt hits record high for first time since February, reaching $36.58 trillion
Tether holds $8 billion worth of gold in secret Swiss vault
Binance will remove the watch tab for ZEC and the seed tab for ENA, PYTH, TAO, and W
Eigen Labs announces reorganization and layoffs to focus on EigenCloud development
New Zealand to Ban Crypto ATMs, Restrict Crypto Transfers in Anti-Money Laundering Reform
Regulatory/Macro
Gaming giant Atari abandons Web3 ecosystem plan Atari X as a separate business line
According to Globenewswire, arcade game giant Atari disclosed in its latest fiscal year earnings report that it plans to adjust its Web3 ecological plan Atari X, which originally hoped to promote the construction of a Web3 blockchain ecosystem to link games, utilities and communities together and explore the issuance of tokens. However, according to the latest data, Atari X's trading activities are too small (only 100,000 euros in fiscal 2024), so it is no longer regarded as a separate business line, but will continue to focus on the core video game business. The report data is as of March 31, 2025, which shows that the company's revenue reached 33.6 million euros, a year-on-year increase of 63%.
New Zealand to Ban Crypto ATMs, Restrict Crypto Transfers in Anti-Money Laundering Reform
According to Decrypt, the New Zealand government is making major reforms to curb money laundering and criminal financing, so New Zealand will stop using cryptocurrency ATMs and set the international cash transfer limit at $5,000. On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Nicole McKee announced the latest anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing reform plan. The government plans to propose a new bill to expand the law enforcement powers of the police and regulators, enable financial intelligence agencies to collect more financial data on key personnel, and negotiate on the collection of system funds. McKee said that the government is determined to combat crime and will not set too many obstacles for legal businesses. It wants to make New Zealand a place where legal business is easy to conduct and criminals are difficult to hide. The reform of setting a transfer limit is precisely to combat the outflow of criminal funds while protecting legal electronic transfers.
U.S. national debt hits record high for first time since February, reaching $36.58 trillion
According to Watcher Guru data, the U.S. national debt hit a record high for the first time since February, reaching $36.58 trillion.
According to CryptoSlate, the four issuers of US dollar stablecoins hold about $182 billion in US Treasury bonds, ranking 17th in the US Treasury's national ranking. Including overnight Treasury bond-collateralized repurchases and money market fund holdings with heavy Treasury bonds, the scale is between Norway (US$195.9 billion) and Saudi Arabia (US$133.8 billion). Among them, Tether's USDT ranks first, holding US$120 billion in Treasury bonds in the first quarter, and increasing its holdings to over US$125 billion in late May; Circle provides USDC with US$55.2 billion in reserves, including US$28.7 billion in Treasury bonds and US$26.5 billion in repurchase agreements; First Digital's FDUSD reserves include US$1.3 billion in Treasury bonds; Paxos' PYUSD reserves are reverse repurchase agreements collateralized by Treasury bonds, corresponding to about US$880 million in government debt. According to the US Treasury Department's April data, the total holdings of the four companies reached US$182.4 billion, surpassing South Korea and the UAE, and second only to Norway.
Tether holds $8 billion worth of gold in secret Swiss vault
According to Bloomberg, Tether Holdings SA, the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin, has its own vault in Switzerland, storing $8 billion worth of gold, and is looking to expand its gold reserves. The company said it currently holds nearly 80 tons of gold, most of which is held directly by Tether, making it one of the world's largest gold holders outside of banks and countries. CEO Paolo Ardoino said: "We have our own vault. I believe it is the safest vault in the world." The facility is located in Switzerland, but for security reasons, the company declined to disclose its specific location and establishment time.
Hong Kong-listed company Greenland Holdings revealed on an interactive platform that its subsidiary Greenland Jinchuang currently holds License No. 4 (providing advice on securities) and License No. 9 (providing asset management) issued by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, and has been upgraded to a license to support virtual asset-related businesses.
Viewpoint
Analysis: Pump.fun’s token sale “has poor prospects” and is currently in trouble
According to The Block, on Monday, Pump.fun announced plans to sell 150 billion PUMP tokens to raise $600 million, which attracted criticism from critics, and the listing information on the Gate exchange mysteriously disappeared. Many cryptocurrency advocates believe that this has a bad impact. Steven Zheng, head of research at The Block, said: "Some users were surprised that Pump was selling tokens. They had expected a large-scale airdrop like popular applications such as Hyperliquid. Although airdrops may still be in the works, Pump will raise another $600 million through token sales when it has already raised $700 million through other means. This will definitely leave a negative impression. " Alice Shikova, marketing director of Space ID, said that now that the Meme coin craze has subsided, the demand for Pump.fun's token sales may be lower than expected. Although it has a brand advantage, it is risky due to insufficient demand and liquidity. Cryptocurrency researcher @0xCabana posted: "Pump.fun's issuance of tokens is like a corrupt president running for election and promising not to embezzle this time. "Ray Youssef, CEO of Noones App, posted on X: "Black exchanges exploit users through perpetual contracts, and Pump.fun sucks the vitality out of DeFi, which ruins cryptocurrencies. Newcomers are cut off and never come back."
According to The Block, the US SEC seems to be about to approve multiple spot cryptocurrency ETFs, and key stakeholders are considering a framework that may speed up the listing process. Sources said that last week, the SEC raised questions about details such as pledges on a SOL ETF proposal, but the communication was constructive. People familiar with the matter said that approval is only a matter of time, but the specific time has not been determined. At the WOLF Trading event on Tuesday, Gregory King, founder of Osprey Funds and Rex Shares, said that the SEC's attitude has changed. Although it will not act arbitrarily, it supports cryptocurrencies. Last week, the SEC approved a hybrid cryptocurrency fund of Grayscale, but the approval was subsequently suspended. People familiar with the matter said that the SEC is advancing in stages, first Bitcoin, then Ethereum, and now considering hybrid asset ETFs. Currently, the SEC is formulating listing standards and plans to shorten the review period. The move is driven by exchanges and will be in line with traditional ETF practices. 21Shares said it has not had direct dialogue with the SEC, but believes that the new framework can reduce listing complexity and uncertainty. James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Industry Research, expects the draft framework to be released this month and implemented in September or October, when the floodgates for other asset ETFs will open. Analyst Eric Balchunas recently estimated that the SEC has a 95% chance of approving ETFs tracking SOL, XRP, and LTC, and that the chances of ETF proposals tracking Dogecoin, Cardano, and Polkadot being approved are also high, at about 90%.
Project News
Eigen Labs announces reorganization and layoffs to focus on EigenCloud development
Sreeram Kannan, CEO of Eigen Labs, posted on the X platform that it announced a company restructuring plan today to streamline operations and focus on building and expanding EigenCloud. The adjustment led to the resignation of some employees, and the company said it would provide support measures such as severance pay, accelerated equity vesting, extended medical insurance and career recommendations. Eigen Labs said that after the reorganization, the team will be more focused on building "the world's first verifiable cloud platform" and called on crypto ecosystem partners to assist departing employees in finding new opportunities. In addition, Kannan added: "Eigencloud includes EigenLayer as the foundation and EigenDA as the data layer. Therefore, we will continue to work on this aspect." In addition, according to Blockworks, Eigen Labs laid off about 25% of its employees this time, laying off 29 employees.
Binance to Support Polygon (POL) Network Upgrade
According to the official announcement, Binance is expected to suspend the token recharge and withdrawal services of the Polygon (POL) network at 21:00 (Eastern Time) on July 10, 2025 to support its network upgrade. The project party is expected to upgrade the network at 22:00 (Eastern Time) on July 10, 2025. In addition, Sandeep Nailwal, CEO of the Polygon Foundation, announced on the X platform that the Polygon PoS network will launch the Heimdall v2 consensus layer upgrade on July 10. This hard fork is the most technically complex update of Polygon PoS since its launch in 2020, mainly involving two core changes: in terms of technical architecture, Heimdall will be fully upgraded from Tendermint+Cosmos-SDK v0.37 to CometBFT+Cosmos-SDK v0.50; in terms of performance, the final confirmation time of the transaction will be shortened to about 5 seconds, and the number of reorganized blocks will not exceed 2.
Binance will remove the watch tab for ZEC and the seed tab for ENA, PYTH, TAO, and W
According to the official announcement, based on the recent review, Binance will remove the watch and seed tags of some tokens on July 9, 2025. The tokens that have removed the watch tag are as follows: Zcash (ZEC). The tokens that have removed the seed tag are as follows: Ethena (ENA), Pyth Network (PYTH), Bittensor (TAO), Wormhole (W).
Phantom Launches Perpetual Contract Trading in Wallet, Powered by Hyperliquid
According to The Block, Web3 wallet Phantom announced the launch of perpetual contract trading function, which is supported by Hyperliquid's API. The service is initially available to EU users, supporting up to 40x leverage and stop loss and take profit functions. Users can trade directly in the wallet and keep their assets in a non-custodial state. This move marks Phantom's transformation from a multi-chain wallet to a comprehensive DeFi portal. It currently supports 8 main chains including Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.
Binance Alpha and Binance Futures will list Tanssi Network (TANSSI)
According to the official announcement, Binance Alpha will launch and open trading of Tanssi Network (TANSSI) at 19:05 (ET on July 9, 2025). In addition, Binance Futures will launch TANSSIUSDT perpetual contracts at 19:30 (ET on July 9, 2025), with a maximum leverage of 50x. All eligible Binance users will receive Binance exclusive token airdrops. Eligible users need to use Binance Alpha points to claim the airdrop through the Binance Alpha event page between 19:05 (ET on July 9, 2025) and 19:05 (ET on July 10, 2025).
Important data
According to Onchain Lens, a whale/institution that had been dormant for 4-6 years recently became active again, transferring 9,000 BTC (worth $977 million) at noon today. The whale transferred a total of 17,283 BTC in the past 24 hours, worth about $1.88 billion.
According to SoSoValue data, yesterday (July 8, Eastern Time), the total net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs was 80.08 million US dollars, and none of the 12 ETFs had a net outflow. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest net inflow in a single day yesterday was Blackrock ETF IBIT, with a single-day net inflow of 66.81 million US dollars. Currently, the total net inflow of IBIT has reached 52.88 billion US dollars. The second is Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF BTC, with a single-day net inflow of 4.82 million US dollars. Currently, the total net inflow of BTC has reached 1.48 billion US dollars. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is 136.75 billion US dollars, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value to the total market value of Bitcoin) is 6.33%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached 49.94 billion US dollars.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, whales/institutions are buying Ethereum. In the past week, wallet address 0xFC82 (possibly associated with Cumberland) withdrew 34,883 ETH (worth $89.45 million) from Binance. In addition, in the past week, wallet address 0x3c9E withdrew 7,200 ETH (worth $18.37 million) from Kraken.
Hackers Target Bitcoin Wallets Worth Billions Stolen from Mt. Gox
According to Decrypt, hackers have targeted an old Bitcoin address (starting with 1FeexV) that contains digital currencies worth more than $8 billion stolen from the closed Mt.Gox exchange. According to BitMEX Research, the attacker sent a transaction containing a phishing website link to the address through Bitcoin's OP_RETURN function. Although OP_RETURN can store information on the blockchain, it is used to embed malicious text to trick the owner into visiting a fake page. The page falsely claims that the wallet is "lost or abandoned" and impersonates the closed Wall Street investment bank Salomon Brothers to try to obtain the owner's personal information. BitMEX warned on the X platform that this website is not legitimate and is part of a Bitcoin scam, and that several old addresses from 2011 have become targets of similar attacks.
Solana Futures Trading Volume on CME Group Exceeds $4 Billion
As Cointelegraph reported, Solana (SOL) futures trading volume has exceeded $4 billion on one of the world’s largest regulated derivatives exchanges, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group).
According to on-chain analyst Ember, 3 hours ago, crypto VC a16z Crypto also transferred the last 400,000 COMP (US$16.48 million) in the address to Coinbase Prime, clearing their COMP holdings. They transferred 400,000 COMP to Coinbase Prime at the end of last month, and transferred another 400,000 today. In 10 days, 800,000 COMP were transferred to Coinbase Prime, with a value of up to US$34.81 million. When they transferred out 400,000 COMP 10 days ago, the COMP price was still US$46, and now the COMP price is only US$41. It has dropped by 11%. Now another 400,000 COMP have been transferred out, which may cause the COMP price to fall further.
Financing
AI-driven crypto trading platform OlaXBT completes $3.38 million seed round led by Amber Group
According to official news, AI-driven crypto trading platform OlaXBT announced the completion of a $3.38 million seed round of financing, led by Amber Group, with participation from DWF Ventures, Mindfulness Capital, Web3Labs club, Credit Scend, etc. According to reports, OlaXBT uses proprietary MCP (Model Context Protocol) technology and reinforcement learning to achieve automated market making, sentiment analysis, and transaction execution. It is built on the BNB Smart Chain and includes a market consisting of interoperable MCP servers and chat-to-earn trading terminals.
Institutional holdings
Remixpoint raises 31.5 billion yen to buy Bitcoin, plans to increase holdings to 3,000 Bitcoins
Remixpoint, a Japanese listed company, announced that it has raised about 31.5 billion yen (about 215 million U.S. dollars) through financing, and plans to use all the funds to buy Bitcoin. The company currently holds 1,051 BTC, and the near-term goal is to increase its holdings to 3,000. The company said that this move is based on a firm belief in the future of Bitcoin and the results of long-term internal discussions. Earlier news, Japanese listed company Remixpoint will pay its CEO's salary in full in Bitcoin.
Mac House, a national chain clothing brand in Japan, announced its specific crypto asset investment plan on July 9, and plans to start buying Bitcoin (BTC) from September 17, 2025. The investment strategy will be based on the "dollar cost averaging method" with regular fixed amounts, while flexibly adjusting the timing and amount of purchases when the market falls sharply. The funds for this investment came from the company's third-party private placement completed on June 19, and the scale of fundraising exceeded expectations. On the basis of the original plan to invest 800 million yen, an additional 915 million yen was added, bringing the total investment amount to 1.715 billion yen. EVO FUND, the main investor in this capital increase, has previously supported a number of Japanese companies in implementing Bitcoin vault strategies, including MetaPlanet and Remixpoint. Earlier news, Japanese clothing chain Mac House announced its entry into the field of Bitcoin mining.
Publicly traded GameSquare raises $8 million to launch Ethereum fund management strategy
According to the official announcement, GameSquare Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: GAME), a media, entertainment and technology company, announced that the pricing of its previously announced underwriting public offering has been determined, and 8,421,054 shares of common stock (or common stock equivalents) will be sold at a price of $0.95 per share, with total proceeds expected to be approximately $8 million before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and issuance expenses. The company intends to use most of the proceeds to accelerate the launch of the newly established Ethereum fund management strategy. The GameSquare board of directors has approved a phased investment in Ethereum, with a total amount of up to $100 million, while retaining sufficient working capital for operating the business.
According to the official announcement, the Swedish H100 Group raised an additional 516 million Swedish kronor (about 54 million U.S. dollars) by executing the sixth and seventh rounds of financing (previously announced for the first time on June 16, 2025). The proceeds will be used to promote investment opportunities within the framework of the Bitcoin reserve strategy. So far, the group's total financing has reached 921 million Swedish kronor (96 million U.S. dollars), a significant increase from the previous 405 million Swedish kronor (42 million U.S. dollars). Earlier on July 2, H100 Group increased its holdings by 47.33 BTC, bringing its total holdings to 247.54.
BTCS plans to raise $100 million for strategic Ethereum acquisitions
Blockchain technology company BTCS Inc. (NASDAQ: BTCS) announced plans to raise $100 million in 2025 to acquire Ethereum. The company will maximize capital efficiency through innovative financing models that combine decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi), including ATM issuance, convertible bonds, Aave on-chain lending, and node staking income, and strive to become a leading listed company in the Ethereum infrastructure field and maintain its leading position in Ethereum holdings among listed companies.
