Robinhood Just Made Its Biggest Crypto Move Yet

Plus: 🔷 Ethereum's newest institutional power play | 🕵️ An FBI director's crypto-adjacent paper trail | 💅 Melania's NFT windfall keeps growing

July 02, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🔷 Robinhood announces the mainnet launch of its blockchain and a load of new products 

  • 🟣 Ethereum's biggest backers are building something community members have been asking for for a long time. 

  • 🕵️ The FBI director's stock disclosure has a crypto-adjacent problem 

  • 💅 The First Lady's digital collectibles are raking in big bucks

Robinhood Flips the Switch on Its Blockchain

Robinhood officially flipped on the public mainnet for Robinhood Chain Wednesday, its Arbitrum-based layer 2, while also making its tokenized Stock Tokens fully live in more than 120 countries. The brokerage also debuted Robinhood Earn, letting eligible U.S. users lend its USDG stablecoin for an estimated 7% APY insured through Lloyd's of London and RELM.

The rollout came bundled with Agentic Accounts for crypto, letting users connect AI models to trade on their behalf, plus expanded perpetual futures covering commodities, ETFs, and FX in Europe, and a fresh entry into Canada following the WonderFi acquisition.

Robinhood stock jumped as much as 8% on Wednesday, but still sits nearly 30% below its October record.

Ethereum Gets Another Nonprofit for Wall Street

A new nonprofit called Ethereum Institutional launched Wednesday to give banks and asset managers an independent point of contact as they evaluate Ethereum for tokenization and stablecoins. It's led by David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson, with funding from Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin plus treasury firms BitMine and SharpLink.

The launch follows last week's debut of EthLabs, another nonprofit backed by the same group, as the Ethereum Foundation narrows its own role after cutting 20% of its staff and 40% of its budget amid nine senior departures this year.

Reaction was largely positive: Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan framed it as proof of Ethereum's decentralized ecosystem "healing itself."

FBI Director's Late MicroStrategy Disclosure Draws Scrutiny

FBI Director Kash Patel bought between $100,001 and $250,000 of Strategy (MSTR) stock on Nov. 21 but didn't disclose it until May 26, more than six months late, according to a NOTUS report. He blamed an unspecified "miscommunication."

Strategy, the world's largest corporate bitcoin holder, has done millions of dollars in business with the DoJ, of which the FBI is a part. The STOCK Act requires officials to disclose trades within 45 days with first-time violators facing ja $200 fine. The DoJ hasn't penalized Patel, a FBI official told NOTUS.

Strategy's stock has lost about half its value since Patel's purchase, tumbling to two-year lows amid concerns over the company's dividend obligations.

Melania Trump's NFT Income Jumped 28x

First lady Melania Trump reported more than $6 million from the sale of NFTs and other collectibles in 2025, according to President Donald Trump's annual federal financial disclosure released Tuesday, 28 times the $216,710 she reported the year before.

The first lady's total earnings came to roughly $17 million, including $10.7 million from her Amazon MGM-backed documentary "Melania" and $521,000 from her memoir. The film, which reportedly cost Amazon $40 million to acquire plus another $35 million to market, grossed just $16.6 million worldwide.

Tuesday's filings show more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income for President Trump, including over $500 million tied to World Liberty Financial token sales.

🔊 UNCHAINED LIVESTREAM TODAY 🔔

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Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

  • 🏛️ Ethereum Foundation published a policy guide arguing governments should treat truly decentralized blockchains as more suitable for public infrastructure than networks controlled by companies or foundations. The report cited Ethereum's uninterrupted uptime since 2015 and roughly $76 billion in staked ETH securing the network as of March.

  • ⚖️ Crypto companies put $189 million toward 2026 midterm election spending, more than a third of the $517 million corporations have spent on federal races so far this cycle, per Public Citizen. Ripple and Coinbase were the sector's largest donors, funneling most of their money to the crypto-aligned Fairshake super PAC.

  • 📉 American Bitcoin will execute a reverse stock split, consolidating shares 1-for-15 to stay above Nasdaq's minimum bid price after the stock hit a fresh low this week. The Eric Trump-backed miner has fallen more than 41% in the past month and nearly 86% over the past year.

  • 🔒 Crypto hackers stole $75.9 million across 40 incidents in June, a 7% drop from May, according to PeckShield. The Humanity Protocol exploit topped the list at $31 million, with the attacker laundering funds across Bitcoin, Solana, Hyperliquid, and BNB Chain.

  • 🇫🇷 France recorded 77 crypto-related kidnapping and extortion cases in the first half of 2026, up sharply from 45 in all of 2025. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez promised a broader security plan after emergency measures led to 200 arrests.

  • 📊 World, a mysterious Solana project, went live as a prediction market inside the Phantom wallet and at world.xyz after months of cryptic teasers. The platform lets users trade event contracts on crypto prices and the 2026 World Cup, settling fully onchain via Chainlink oracles and Phantom's CASH stablecoin.

  • 📈 Forward Industries added over 500,000 SOL during its fiscal third quarter, bringing its Solana treasury to 7.55 million SOL worth roughly $573 million. Shares jumped nearly 19% on the news. 

  • ⚖️ Christopher Delgado pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering as CEO of the Goliath Ventures crypto Ponzi scheme, admitting to a minimum $250 million in investor losses. Prosecutors say the scheme, which promised returns from crypto "liquidity pools," took in as much as $400 million from victims total.

  • 🏦 Crédit Agricole launched a euro-denominated stablecoin called EURXT through its CACEIS unit, using it to settle the first subscription into a tokenized Amundi money market fund. The MiCA-compliant token is backed 1:1 by euro reserves held at CACEIS Bank.

  • 💰 Venice AI raised a $65 million Series A led by Dragonfly at a $1 billion valuation, its first outside funding round. The privacy-focused AI platform, founded by Erik Voorhees, says it never logs user prompts and serves 3.5 million registered users.