While everyone watched token prices, ~$1.03B in venture quietly flowed into stablecoin rails in 2026 — across ~30 rounds, and not one was about a token.

Yesterday alone: 3 rounds — Flex $70M, Velocity $38M, Pact $7M.

Japan's parliament passed a landmark bill formally reclassifying cryptocurrencies as financial instruments, shifting them from a payment-tool framework to an investment category alongside stocks and bonds.

The legislation, approved by the House of Councillors on Wednesday, amends the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and the Payment Services Act. It clears a key legal hurdle for future spot Bitcoin ETFs, with the Japan Exchange Group reportedly eyeing first listings as early as 2027, though no ETF products have been approved yet.

The bill also lays the groundwork for cutting Japan's crypto tax rate from as high as 55% down to a flat 20%, split 15% national and 5% regional, expected to take effect in 2028 alongside three-year loss carry-forward deductions.

Alongside the lighter tax treatment, the new rules tighten oversight: insider trading is now prohibited, issuers face mandatory annual disclosures, and penalties for unregistered crypto operators jump sharply, from a maximum three years in prison to ten, with fines rising from 3 million yen to 10 million yen (~$61,600).

The framework is expected to take effect in 2027, ahead of the 2028 tax overhaul.

BlackRock has become the first asset manager to surpass $15.3 trillion in AUM, marking the strongest first half in the firm's history.

The company reported $192B in Q2 net inflows and a record $321B in H1 2026, driven by strong demand for ETFs, private markets, and active strategies.

BlackRock's assets under management reached a record $15.3 trillion, up 22% year-over-year, following $192 billion in Q2 net inflows and a record $321 billion in the first half of 2026. The firm's iShares ETF platform attracted $177.9 billion in H1 inflows, pushing total ETF assets above $6.2 trillion.

The company also reported 31% year-over-year revenue growth to $7.08 billion, while adjusted EPS came in at $13.91, beating analyst expectations. BlackRock's digital asset products now manage $48.8 billion, although crypto investment products recorded $3.1 billion in net outflows during the second quarter.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called it the strongest start to a year in the firm's history, citing continued momentum across ETFs, technology, and private markets. Meanwhile, the company also increased its quarterly share buyback program to $550M.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid detected a suspected $18M exploit involving Ostium Vault on Arbitrum.

According to the report, the attacker allegedly abused a registered PriceUpKeep forwarder and future-dated authorized oracle reports to generate artificial trading profits, triggering an ~$18M USDC payout from the vault.

The stolen funds are reportedly being swapped from USDC into ETH via Kyber Network.

Ostium is an RWA perpetual trading protocol focused on equities, commodities, and forex. The project has raised ~$27.8M from investors including General Catalyst, Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute, and GSR.

More details are expected as the investigation continues.

has been burned!

The gap between the cheapest and priciest way to turn €1,000 into self-custodied BTC? 12x.

Across 7 MiCA-licensed exchanges OKX prices the full move — deposit, taker fee, slippage, BTC withdrawal — at ~€2.47. Same trade on Crypto(dot)com: €32.18.

Fee structures are the quietest tax in crypto — and most never check until they've paid it.

Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International have jointly offered $60.50 a share — more than $53 billion — to buy PayPal, backed by roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing, according to a Reuters report.

The offer values PayPal about 28% above its last close. Stripe and Advent would take equal stakes and keep the business whole, folding PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin and payments network into Stripe. Neither company has confirmed the talks, and a tie-up of this scale would face heavy antitrust scrutiny in both the US and Europe before it could close.

Coinbase has quietly begun letting mainland China residents register and verify accounts with a Chinese national ID and a local address, replacing an earlier setup that required a Chinese passport and a Hong Kong address.

Users reportedly cleared identity checks in about a minute. Coinbase has not confirmed the change, and it stays unclear whether the shift extends beyond account sign-ups to actual trading. The move is striking given China’s 2021 ban on crypto trading and on overseas platforms serving its residents; COIN stock ticked higher on the report.

Galaxy has launched GOFR, an institutional financing program that lets firms tap onchain credit by facing Galaxy directly instead of navigating DeFi protocols themselves.

Borrowers get a single optimized rate blended across Aave, Morpho, Spark, Kamino and more, sparing them the complexity of navigating onchain lending markets. It positions Galaxy as an institutional gateway to DeFi liquidity, collapsing fragmented onchain lending into one clean, optimized borrowing rate.

Telegram shipped a major update: a full rich-text editor for blogs and long posts — with tables, inline media, headings, quotes, AI-generated text and 32,000-character messages.

New Communities let users bundle channels, groups and bots together and join them without invite links, while groups gain private, ephemeral bot replies. It also revamps GIF search across a library of 350 million GIFs, a move that pushes Telegram further as an all-in-one publishing and messaging app.