A full list of Major Upcoming Events, to be updated

Stripe-owned Bridge has been added to the EU’s MiCA register after receiving regulatory approval in Luxembourg, becoming the 42nd authorized electronic money token (EMT) issuer in the bloc.

The approval follows Bridge securing both a MiCA crypto-asset service provider (CASP) authorization and an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from Luxembourg’s CSSF, allowing it to provide regulated services across all 27 EU member states.

Bridge’s infrastructure enables businesses to issue euro-backed stablecoins, create named virtual IBANs, provide euro accounts, and facilitate cross-border payments and settlement through a single integration.

ESMA also added three German institutions to its MiCA register, bringing the total number of authorized CASPs across the EU to 324.

Basis trading is crypto's quiet yield engine, you earn from funding rates and the spot-futures spread, not from price going up.

Ethena turned it into a $4B+ category. Now a new wave runs the same trade in very different ways: Radiant Prime as an institutional, multi-factor fund (independently verified), plus Avant and Liminal as onchain protocols.

One trade, four builds; and yields that tell a story. Full breakdown.

We mapped 21 startups building the brains behind the machines: foundation models that give robots a mind (World Labs, Physical Intelligence, Skild AI), the infrastructure that trains and ships them (Foxglove, Voxel51), and the labs & farms already putting them to work (Periodic Labs, Carbon Robotics).

Stablecoins, payments and RWA infrastructure generated most of the week's momentum. Much of the activity came from banks, payment providers and infrastructure companies expanding products that had already been in development.

🔎 Recent Updates & Developments

- Mastercard completed its BVNK acquisition

- Wells Fargo launched tokenized deposits

- Cloudflare rolled out stablecoin wallets for AI

- Western Union launched Stablecard remittances

- Ethereum proposed burning validator rewards

- Base introduced the Cobalt upgrade

- Binance sued RedotPay for $470M

- Plume rebranded its RWA platform as Plume Vaults

The Optimism Foundation has released its Year 5 budget outlook, projecting that approximately 343 million OP will enter circulation between May 2026 and April 2027, bringing the circulating supply to 2.504 billion OP, or 58.3% of the total supply.

The projected increase includes 200 million OP allocated to the Ecosystem Fund, 47.6 million OP for Early Core Contributors, 15.3 million OP for investors, and additional scheduled distributions under the original token allocation framework. The Foundation noted that no new token allocation has been requested.

Optimism also confirmed that no airdrops or Retro Funding distributions are currently planned for Year 5, while OP buybacks have surpassed 9 million tokens under the protocol's ongoing revenue-backed buyback program.

The Foundation emphasized that the projections are directional estimates and may change based on governance decisions and ecosystem performance.

China's Unitree opens its IPO subscription Aug 10 on Shanghai's STAR Market at a ~$6.2B valuation. Last year it shipped ~5,500 humanoids, more than anyone, on $237M revenue and 60% margins.

For contrast: US rival Figure is valued at $39B, 6× more, with almost no revenue.

A-shares are closed to foreign retail, so the way in is crypto — a pre-IPO perp is already live on MEXC (~$72, +8% today).

We mapped 29 private startups building the machines: humanoids (Figure, 1X), warehouse & construction robots (Bedrock, ANYbotics), self-driving vehicles (Waymo, Waabi) and autonomous defense systems (Anduril, Shield AI).

The trigger wasn't price. It was the $292M Kelp bridge exploit back in April. Since then, issuer after issuer has quietly re-routed their cross-chain rails to Chainlink's CCIP, capped by BitGo moving WBTC ($7.3B).

When the bridge breaks, everything built on top starts hunting for safer rails. One exploit is redrawing entire cross-chain trust map.

Most holders had never heard of Kulipa. That's the catch: you don't choose the company that actually issues your crypto card. A handful of invisible issuers power the cards you use every day: MetaMask (Baanx), Phantom (Bridge), Ledger, Bitget Wallet, and more.

And the layer is consolidating fast: Stripe bought Bridge ($1.1B), Mastercard bought BVNK ($1.8B). The strong get acquired — the weak, like Kulipa, brick their partners' cards and disappear.

Your card is only as alive as its issuer. Here's who's really behind them 👇