Hi! In today’s edition:
🇪🇺 HTX lands on the EU’s naughty list
🏦 A major exchange is shutting down, and its own CEO learned about it in public
📈 Robinhood is courting a new prediction market partner
⚖️ The CFTC has a problem with how prediction market venues are filing their paperwork
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HTX Lands on Europe's Russia Sanctions List
The EU adopted its 21st Russia sanctions package on July 23 with HTX, the exchange founded as Huobi in 2013, among the crypto platforms facing an EU transaction ban from Aug. 23.
The package carries 218 listings, 48 individuals and 170 entities, the largest batch in four years. It freezes assets at 94 banks and extends transaction bans to 33 more Russian financial institutions. Fourteen crypto platforms are covered, based in Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.
HTX's addition to the EU's sanctions list stops short of an asset freeze, according to Reuters. EU, EEA and Swiss users have three months from Aug. 23 to apply to withdraw funds or close accounts. The European Council also gave itself a new power to ban crypto services from an entire country, though the list of countries is still empty.
BitMart's CEO Found Out With Everyone Else
BitMart is shutting down. The exchange started suspending deposits, registrations and new orders early Sunday, will stop all trading on Aug. 26, and plans to close the platform on Jan. 31, 2027.
Global CEO Nenter (Nathan) Chow said on X that BitMart told him on July 24 his employment was ending, that he has played no role in decisions since, and that he learned of the wind-down when it went public. BMX, the exchange token, has fallen over 80% since Friday to about $0.054.
Earlier this month the message was the opposite. BitMart's first-half report touted 256% growth in asset-management AUM and laid out plans for prediction markets and tokenized assets. In June it announced an Australian licence and claimed 13 million users.
Robinhood Wants Kalshi's Rival on Its App
Robinhood is in talks with Crypto.com to carry its event contracts, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Robinhood already sources contracts from Kalshi, Interactive Brokers' ForecastEx and Rothera, a CFTC-licensed venue it backed alongside Susquehanna in 2025. More than 16 billion event contracts have traded on Robinhood this year, against 12 billion in all of last year.
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told the Journal last month that he views Robinhood as a leading competitor, even while supplying it.
CFTC Tells Exchanges to Stop Bulk-Filing Contracts
The CFTC's Division of Market Oversight issued an advisory on July 24 telling exchanges to stop submitting broad, template-style self-certifications that bundle many event contract variations into one filing.
The agency said the practice limits its ability to check whether an exchange has supplied everything required under Regulation 40.2, and whether it has actually assessed settlement methodology, data sources and core-principles compliance for each contract it plans to list. Still, the advisory said closely related contracts can be certified as a class.
Self-certification is how most event contracts reach the market: an exchange files, and the contract can list without prior approval. Tightening that standard slows the pipeline for the venues building out sports and economic markets fastest.
🚨 DON’T MISS BITS + BIPS TODAY 🚨
ARK Invest's Lorenzo Valente joins Bits + Bips this week to weigh in on the AI capex debate and China's ban on open-weight models.
Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins also dig into the CLARITY Act two weeks on, fresh numbers on RWAs overtaking crypto, and what BitMEX and BitMart shutting down means for offshore exchanges.
Live Monday at 4:30pm ET.
⚖️ The Fraternal Order of Police reversed course and backed the latest Clarity Act draft in a July 24 letter to Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott and ranking member Elizabeth Warren, saying revised Section 10604 preserves investigators' ability to pursue digital asset crimes. However, the underlying text was unchanged, leaving it unclear which revisions the union reviewed.
⚖️ BitMEX was sued in a proposed class action on July 23, the same day it announced its shutdown, over 622.66 BTC ($40.7 million) that plaintiffs BKX Services and David Namdar say was wrongly liquidated and withheld. The complaint alleges an internal trading desk could see private customer data and keep trading during server freezes that locked other users out of closing positions.
💸 LMAX Group is weighing a sale or listing at up to $5 billion with Morgan Stanley and Stifel's KBW, with a Nasdaq IPO the current preference, according to CoinDesk. The London firm took a $150 million Ripple investment in January.
🤫 B2C2 held takeover talks with several suitors over the past 18 months, according to CoinDesk, though valuation has been the sticking point. The market maker, 90% owned by Japan's SBI Holdings, is said to be seeking more than $1 billion.
📉 Poolin filed for Chapter 11 in New Jersey on July 22 with roughly $173.1 million in prepetition obligations, $163.7 million of it IOUs owed to about 11,700 wallet customers frozen out since 2022. Thor CALAP has signed on as stalking horse bidder at $52 million for the former mining pool's two West Texas sites.
📉 Storj Labs filed Chapter 11 in West Virginia on Sunday to clear what it called legacy obligations, saying the network and customer service continue as normal. Parent Inveniam endorsed the reorganization, and management wants token holders and investors to share ownership of the restructured company.
🇮🇳 India's cybercrime agency ordered GitHub to pull three repositories for Jack Dorsey's Bluetooth mesh messenger Bitchat on July 23, giving the platform three hours to comply. Protesters in Delhi have been using the app to coordinate through repeated mobile internet shutdowns around Jantar Mantar.
🔒 North Korea arrested a group of former state cyber operators on July 12 for allegedly hacking its own central bank and Foreign Trade Bank and laundering the proceeds through crypto, according to Daily NK. Chinese brokers converted the funds into dollars and yuan, according to the report.
🏛️ The Bitcoin Policy Institute joined Palantir and Anduril as founding partners in the State Department's Freedom Tech Excellence Program, announced July 24. The talent-exchange scheme embeds private sector staff in diplomatic work on encryption, counter-surveillance and AI governance.
🏦 Wise will refile for a US national trust bank charter under a GENIUS Act framework after the OCC rejected its first attempt, citing compliance concerns.
💻 Samsung will add stablecoins to Samsung Wallet, showing a mockup holding Circle's USDC at Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22 without naming Circle as a partner. No launch date, supported networks or custody model has been disclosed.
🇰🇷 POSCO International put live receivables on the Injective blockchain in a pilot with LG CNS, aiming to speed up payments between its global subsidiaries, according to CoinDesk. South Korea's largest trading company, which booked $22.2 billion in revenue last year, plans to move the system into production after the test.
🏦 KB Kookmin Bank will launch a cross-border payment service on JPMorgan's Kinexys network in August, covering dollar transfers for importers and exporters across 10 markets. It is the first South Korean bank to use the platform commercially, and the service connects to SWIFT for near-instant settlement.
💰 World Foundation raised $52.5 million in a WLD token sale led by Pantera Capital, with every token bought locked for 12 months. Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital and Susquehanna Crypto joined the first close, taking total funding for the Altman-co-founded project to roughly $492.5 million.
💸 Notabene took a strategic investment from Ripple on July 23, with no amount disclosed, and will integrate RLUSD into its Notabene Flow B2B payments platform. The compliance network spans more than 2,300 institutions and over $2 trillion in annualized transaction volume.
💰 Memecoin.Fun raised $3.5 million in a strategic round led by Becker Ventures and settled in USDG, with BitValue Capital, MasonLabs, Negentropy.Capital and angel investor Billy Wen participating. The Robinhood Chain launchpad said the money will fund launchpad infrastructure and cross-chain bridge work.
Michael Saylor: Upgrade the World
