Standard Chartered and Circle have launched institutional USDC minting and redemption — making Standard Chartered the first global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to offer it through a regulated banking channel.

The service runs out of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), giving institutions a bank-grade on-ramp to mint and redeem USDC directly against Circle's reserves.

It's a milestone for stablecoin adoption — a top-tier global bank plugging USDC straight into regulated finance.

Avalanche Treasury Corp told the SEC its ability to continue as a going concern is in doubt after its Nasdaq-listed stock (AVAT) fell 93% in a month — from over $10 to under $0.73.

The firm holds ~15M AVAX (about 3.5% of supply), which it paid roughly $265M for — a position now worth less than half. It disclosed the going-concern risk in a July 1 SEC filing.

It's one of the starkest failures yet among the wave of crypto "treasury" companies that levered up on tokens.

dYdX Labs has rebranded its exchange as Arcus, a next-generation DEX it built jointly with Robinhood Crypto and launched July 1 on Robinhood Chain. Arcus lists 95 tokenized US stocks for spot trading plus waitlisted perpetuals, with 0% web trading fees and pre-IPO access planned. The year-long build pairs dYdX's on-chain derivatives with Robinhood's retail reach. dYdX Labs stays independent, and the DYDX token remains — though it slid ~23% after the announcement.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT says the exchange AscendEX (formerly Bitmax) has been delaying or failing to process user withdrawals for weeks — while still accepting deposits. As of July 2, AscendEX has stayed silent on X for nine days. A large affected user says co-founder George Cao isn't responding to their concerns, and ZachXBT is urging anyone with stuck funds to file reports with law enforcement and regulators. AscendEX previously lost ~$78M in a December 2021 hack attributed to the Lazarus Group.

The real story: a brokerage giant now owns its settlement rails instead of renting someone else's — and it went live with a full day-one stack: Chainlink (oracles), LayerZero (bridge), Uniswap (DEX), Morpho (lending), Lighter (perps), Fireblocks & BitGo (custody), Alchemy (RPC), Allium (analytics). This is the RWA distribution war we mapped in our Q2 recap — now with a public brokerage in the ring.

Payward — Kraken's parent — has closed its acquisition of Reap, a stablecoin-native card issuing and payments infrastructure firm licensed across APAC and the Americas. The deal folds card issuance, cross-border payments and treasury into Payward's B2B platform — one API instead of multiple correspondent banks. Reap stays a standalone brand under co-founder Daren Guo. Announced in May and closed July 1 with terms undisclosed — another sign stablecoin rails are becoming default for cross-border business payments.

Tokenized real-world assets grew their user base 31% last quarter (723.6K → 945.9K holders), and the retail wave didn't follow the money. Solana added the most: +106,838 holders (+58%), now the largest holder base in RWA at 291.7K. But the sharpest surge was BNB Chain — up 166% (+70,809), a clear retail rush. Ethereum added +39K; Stellar (+73%) and Base (+77%) grew fast off smaller bases. The tell: value concentrates in Ethereum, but people are onboarding through Solana and BNB. RWA is going retail — just not on the chain that holds the value.

Privacy-focused AI startup Venice AI has raised $65 million in a Series A round at a $1 billion valuation, marking its first external fundraise. The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, and others. Venice says it already has 3 million active users, 850,000+ unique website visitors, and processes around 1.7 million API calls per day. The company positions itself as an “uncensored” AI platform, offering access to more than 200 models while keeping user data private. CEO Erik Voorhees said Venice is built as a neutral tool, similar to Bitcoin’s open protocol philosophy. Venice plans to use the new capital to buy GPUs and build its own data centers, improving margins and reducing reliance on leased infrastructure. The startup also has two tokens, VVV and DIEM, though Voorhees said only about 8% of users pay with crypto.

Edel Finance paused its lending protocol after an attacker manipulated the pricing of a tokenized Google share used as collateral, leaving about $403,000 in bad debt. According to the team, the attacker inflated the value of wGOOGLx, a wrapped version of the tokenized Alphabet share GOOGLx, to around 78x its true price. That allowed them to borrow real assets against fake collateral. Edel said its Chainlink price feeds were working correctly, with Google stock still priced at around $357. The issue came from the wrapping mechanism, where the conversion between GOOGLx and wGOOGLx was manipulated. The protocol has frozen all version-one contracts, traced the attacker’s transactions, and offered a whitehat settlement. Edel also said no depositor will lose funds, as the team will cover the bad debt and restore balances one for one.

More than $1.988 billion worth of token unlocks are set to hit the market over the next month. The schedule includes both large cliff unlocks and continuous linear releases across major crypto assets. 1️⃣ Cliff unlocks (each above $10M) include HYPE, PUMP, H, ZRO, CONX, ENA, and KAITO, with some tokens releasing significant portions of their adjusted supply in a single event. 2️⃣ Linear unlocks dominate the broader flow, led by RAIN ($896M), LAB ($336M), SOL ($150M), CC, WLD, TRUMP, ASTER, TAO, MORPHO, AVAX, ZEC, JTO, and NEAR, representing steady monthly emissions across ecosystems. Combined, these unlocks highlight a heavy supply overhang across both large-cap and mid-cap tokens, with potential short-term pressure depending on absorption demand and market liquidity conditions.