CryptoDiffer News

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​Klarna Seeks Green Light to Become a US-Chartered Bank Klarna has applied to the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish Klarna Bank USA, a proposed Utah-chartered industrial bank. If approved, the unit would be FDIC-insured and operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Klarna Inc.

The move marks another step in Klarna’s push beyond buy now, pay later and deeper into full-scale banking. The company says it already serves U.S. customers through partner banks, while about 30 million Americans use Klarna each year.

Klarna also named Gary Harding, former chairman and CEO of Milestone Bank and former president and CEO of Prime Alliance Bank, to lead the proposed bank if the application is approved. 👉 cnbc.com/2026/07/06/klarna-seeks-us-bank-charter-in-push-beyond-buy-now-pay-later

​Yield Guild Games to Shut Down Its Gaming Publishing Division Yield Guild Games (YGG) announced it is sunsetting YGG Play, its Web3 game publishing arm, citing unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and an unsustainable market for crypto game publishing. The transition will be completed by August 1.

Despite generating over $9M in lifetime revenue by the end of Q1 2026, YGG said the prolonged crypto market downturn and weak retail activity made the business no longer commercially viable. The company will also lay off 35 employees as part of the restructuring.

Going forward, YGG will shift its focus toward the AI data economy, building gaming datasets for AI training while leveraging its community to create behavioral data and expand AI-related opportunities. ‍ 👉 x.com/YieldGuild/status/2074151143966478430?s=20

​Revolut to Phase Out USDT, Ending Support by August 31 Revolut has notified users that it will remove USDT from its list of supported assets for affected European accounts.

Buying USDT is available until July 6, deposits stop on July 30, and users can still sell or withdraw their USDT until August 31. After that, any remaining balance will be automatically converted to fiat.

The move comes as MiCA continues to reshape stablecoin access across the EU. Reuters reported that Revolut already holds a MiCA licence, while EU regulators have warned crypto firms without authorization to put orderly wind-down plans in place. Revolut’s decision adds another major consumer platform to the list of venues reducing USDT support in Europe. For users holding USDT on Revolut, the key dates are now July 6, July 30, and August 31. 👉 finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/tether-usdt-exits-revolut

USD.​AI & BSQ Capital Form a $300M Joint Venture for AI Compute USD.​AI and BSQ Capital Partners have formed a joint venture to finance up to $300M of AI compute across Asia-Pacific, structured as GPU-backed financings.

The initial deployment targets $300M, with a path to upsize to $1B once performance milestones are met — channelling onchain credit into real-world GPU infrastructure to meet surging regional AI-compute demand.

👉 prnewswire.com/news-releases/usdai-and-bsq-capital-partners-form-joint-venture-to-finance-300m-of-ai-compute-across-asia-pacific-302813765.html

Variational Brings TradFi Onchain with “Swaps” Variational has launched “swaps” — an onchain instrument that connects crypto markets with TradFi liquidity, offering tighter spreads and deeper liquidity.

Funding is made predictable through dealer-backed OTC execution, bridging onchain markets with institutional-grade liquidity. The new instrument is slated to launch in Q3.

👉 x.com/variational_io/status/2074126508000755983

Interfold Opens the $FOLD Public Sale via Uniswap CCA Interfold — infrastructure for multiplayer privacy that lets independent parties coordinate without exposing inputs — has laid out full details for its FOLD token auction, a Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA) on Uniswap.

Registration & verification: July 6–7 (KYC via Predicate). Auction: July 8, 10am ET → July 10, 10am ET. Starting CCA price $0.0167, starting FDV $20M, 120M FOLD up for auction (of a 1.2B supply), plus a 48M FOLD airdrop. FOLD transferability / TGE target: Aug 19, with a 40-day cooldown on auction-bought FOLD.

Bidding runs through the official Uniswap CCA interface — participants set a max FDV and budget, and successful bids clear at the same price. 👉 x.com/theInterfold/status/2072921321332154393

Ripple Secures Full MiCA License Across the EU Ripple has received full Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) authorisation from Luxembourg's CSSF, completing its MiCA requirements and confirming it as fully compliant across the European Economic Area.

Its end-to-end regulated crypto-payments product is now available to financial institutions, corporates and businesses across all 30 EEA countries. Ripple is now one of a small number of firms with full MiCA authorisation, part of a global portfolio of 75+ regulatory licenses.

“Ripple enters the post-transitional MiCA era fully compliant and ready to scale,” said Cassie Craddock, Managing Director UK & Europe at Ripple. 👉 ripple.com/ripple-press/ripple-receives-full-eu-mica-casp-license

​​Treasuries, ETFs & Crypto Capital Flows This week featured new corporate treasury announcements across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, while ETF flows remained mixed, with continued outflows from BTC and ETH products and modest inflows into select altcoins. Corporate Treasuries - Strategy sold 3,588 BTC to fund dividends on its digital credit securities - Metaplanet increased its holdings to 43,000 BTC. - BitMine launched its ETH treasury strategy. - Forward Industries acquired 500K+ SOL, bringing holdings to 7.55M+ SOL. ETF Flows Bitcoin ETFs: -$526M net outflows (8th consecutive week). Ethereum ETFs: -$13.7M net outflows.

​Prediction Markets: The Q2 Power Shift Prediction market volume climbed $30.9B → $35.8B in Q2 (+16% QoQ), capped by a $14.5B June — the biggest month of the year.

The real story is the power shift in share of volume, Q1 → Q2: — Kalshi: 42.4% → 58.4% (+38%) — now runs the market — Polymarket: 37.9% → 32.6% (−14%) — still #2, losing ground — Predict.fun: 2.8% → 3.8% (+36%) — Limitless: 0.7% → 2.0% (+186%) — fastest riser — Opinion: 16.2% → 3.2% (−80%) — the quarter's big loser

Data via PredictionTalk — explore every market, live volumes and share splits, and track the race yourself 👇 predictiontalk.org/prediction-markets

Summer Finance Exploited for ~$6M DeFi protocol Summer Finance has been drained of roughly $6M on Ethereum, according to on-chain security firm PeckShield, which flagged the attack.

The team has issued no official statement so far, and the exact attack vector is not yet confirmed. Around $6M in assets were moved out of the protocol before the alert.

👉 x.com/PeckShieldAlert/status/2074009833909682307

Vitalik Lays Out the “Lean Ethereum” Roadmap Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sketched the chain's third major era — “Lean Ethereum” — with upgrades expected to land over the next three to four years.

Highlights: recursive STARKs become a native verification component; quantum-vulnerable cryptography is swapped for post-quantum alternatives; a new “scalable state” type targets 100 TB by 2030 (cutting costs for some tokens 10x+); and RISC-V / leanISA VMs are explored for programmable privacy.

The near-term Glasterdam upgrade is also expected to significantly raise Ethereum's gas limit. 👉 beincrypto.com/vitalik-lean-ethereum-roadmap-starks-quantum

Moonbeam Leaves Polkadot, Migrates GLMR to Base Moonbeam Network — one of Polkadot's earliest and biggest parachains — is fully leaving the ecosystem after ~4 years and migrating its GLMR token to Base, Coinbase's Ethereum L2.

Holders have until July 31 to bridge GLMR 1:1 to a new ERC-20 on Base through a dedicated migration portal. Centralized exchanges are expected to swap custodied balances automatically.

The move ends a four-year run on Polkadot and repositions Moonbeam inside the Ethereum ecosystem as a decentralized network for AI-agent infrastructure and communications. 👉 x.com/MoonbeamNetwork/status/2073046469741781197

OKX Ventures Acquires 20% of South Korea's Coinone OKX Ventures has taken a ~20% stake in Coinone, one of South Korea's largest crypto exchanges, becoming a joint third-largest shareholder alongside Korea Investment & Securities — each now holds 19.6%.

The stake is part of a 160B KRW (~$106M) package of new and existing shares. Founder & CEO Cha Myung-hoon stays the top individual shareholder at 27.8% with full management control; Com2uS Holdings & affiliates hold 25%.

Beyond capital it's a technology deal: Coinone will integrate OKX's matching engine, custody system and wallet technology to sharpen trading infrastructure, compliance and institutional services. OKX CEO Star Xu noted Cha's white-hat security background fits OKX's engineering-first culture. 👉 digitaltoday.co.kr/en/view/78116

​$TRUMP: How a Million Buyers Funded 58 Wallets 18 months after launch, the scorecard on the presidential memecoin is brutal:

— ~1,000,000 investors underwater, down a combined $3.81B — Only 58 wallets made millions — 764,000 are in the red — Token is −97% from its $74 peak ($15B → $436M market cap) — $10,000 bought at the top is worth ~$230 today

Meanwhile, 80% of supply sits with Trump-linked entities, and insiders pulled ~$635M in fees and royalties. For every $1 insiders earned, retail lost $6. The house always wins.

​​MAJOR UPCOMING EVENTS THIS SUMMER! A full list of Major Upcoming Events, to be updated 👉 https://cryptodiffer.com/events

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​Thea Network Raises $8M to Build AI Settlement Infrastructure Thea, a predictive behavioral AI network, has raised $8 million in a round led by Maven 11 Capital, The Spartan Group, Manifold, Hack VC, and Fisher8 Capital, with participation from Galois Capital, DCF God, and icebergy.

The team says the funding will help develop Thea Network, a federated trust-minimized settlement layer built to unify access and coordination across intelligent applications. The project is focused on turning AI services into a more programmable and scalable settlement system.

Thea Network connects purpose-built models with humans and AI agents through a partitioned off-chain compute network anchored to Solana with ZK-proofs. It is designed to support parallel request processing and proof generation, aiming to combine blockchain-level integrity with cloud-like performance. THEA currently does not have a token, and no ICO or public sale has been announced. 👉 x.com/Thea_AI/status/2072721046088683595?s=20

​Spotify Confirms Streaming Fraud Linked to Prediction Markets Spotify has confirmed it found evidence of artificial streaming after a Kalshi trader flagged suspicious activity tied to music-chart prediction markets. The issue centered on Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings,” which briefly surged to No. 1 on Spotify’s U.S. chart before being pushed back after an internal review.

Spotify said it removed more than 500,000 artificial streams that had inflated the track’s ranking. By the time the correction was made, Kalshi had already settled the market based on the earlier chart data.

The situation has raised fresh concerns about how prediction markets can create incentives to manipulate the underlying data they track. Kalshi said it is investigating the matter, while Spotify asked Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its branding and clarify that there is no partnership. 👉 wired.com/story/spotify-streaming-manipulation-prediction-markets-polymarket-kalshi

​​Only 3 Perp DEXs Grew Open Interest in 2026 Across the field, just three perp DEXs added open interest this year. Everyone else bled positions — even names pushing massive volume. 📈 The only growers • Pacifica +32.8% ($64M → $85M) • Hyperliquid +24.2% ($7.46B → $9.26B) • GRVT +12.0% ($318M → $356M) The tell: volume ≠ sticky positions. Aster did $482B in volume and still lost 31% of its OI; Apex traded $233B and shed 46%. Open interest is the honest metric — it's capital willing to stay on the book, not just pass through.