Poolin has Filed Chapter 11, Sets $52 Million Floor Bid

Poolin, once among the world's largest bitcoin mining pools before it halted withdrawals in 2022, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and set a $52 million floor bid for its Texas mining operations.

The $52 million offer is a stalking-horse (floor) bid for Poolin's Texas mining assets, setting the opening price for a court-supervised sale of the assets.

👉 theblock.co/post/409587

BitMEX Hit With $40M Lawsuit Over 623 BTC

BKX Services and investor David Namdar have accused BitMEX of misappropriating 623 BTC (about $40M), alleging the exchange forcibly liquidated their positions and swept the remaining funds into its insurance fund.

The lawsuit was filed in a New York court on the same day that BitMEX announced its upcoming shutdown.

👉 cointelegraph.com/news/bitmex-liquidation-fraud-lawsuit-shutdown

Gnoland Launches $86M FDV Public Token Sale for GNOT

Gnoland, the smart contract platform built on Gno, a Go-based interpreted language, has opened a live public sale for its native token GNOT, running as a uniform-price English auction to July 27, 2026.

The sale offers 38,760,000 GNOT (~2.9% of total supply) with a starting price of $0.0645, a $100 minimum commitment, and a $2.5M soft cap, accepting USDC and USDT on Ethereum mainnet.

Total supply is fixed at 1.33B GNOT, with only ~14.8% circulating at TGE. Allocation breaks down across a Cosmos governance snapshot airdrop (26.26%), NewTendermint LLC (24.91%), investors (22.51%), an AtomOne snapshot airdrop (17.33%), plus smaller ecosystem, core, and validator treasuries.

US investors face a 1-year lockup, and at the $0.0645 sale price, FDV lands at roughly $86M.

Participation requires identity verification through Echo's Sonar compliance platform before connecting a wallet and bidding.

Founded by Jae Kwon, co-founder of Cosmos and Tendermint, Gnoland positions itself as a "language-based, multi-user OS", letting Go developers deploy fully on-chain, human-readable smart contracts without learning a new language.

👉 sale.gno.land/cryptodiffer

HTX Named in EU's Russia Sanctions Package

HTX — the global crypto exchange formerly known as Huobi — has been included in the European Union's latest package of sanctions targeting Russia, according to a report from Reuters.

The inclusion places a major exchange directly under EU restrictions, underscoring the bloc's tightening focus on crypto platforms within its Russia sanctions regime.

👉 reuters.com/business/finance/crypto-exchange-htx-included-eus-russia-sanctions-2026-07-24

Colibri Trade Secures $1M to Deepen Liquidity Across Prediction Markets

Colibri Trade, a crypto-native quantitative trading firm built specifically for prediction markets, has secured a $1,000,000 trading capital allocation, deployed through Colibri's market-making infrastructure, a mandate rather than a venture investment.

Colibri already runs over $10M in monthly trading volume across 70+ markets spanning crypto, sports, politics, geopolitics, and macro, with 24/7 automated execution and risk management active on leading venues including Polymarket, Kalshi, Limitless, Predict fun, XO Markets, and Opinion.

The new capital will flow directly into Colibri's systems to provide continuous two-sided liquidity, deepen order books, and tighten spreads across those venues.

The fresh fundds comes as prediction markets face a widening gap between user growth and market structure, liquidity remains fragmented across venues, order books thin outside headline markets, and spreads inconsistent, limiting how efficiently capital actually gets deployed.

Colibri's infrastructure is positioned to close that gap, offering fair-value pricing and consistent quotes where books would otherwise stay shallow.

👉 x.com/colibri_trade/status/2080661124790329722?s=20

MAJOR UPCOMING EVENTS THIS SUMMER!

A full list of Major Upcoming Events, to be updated
👉 https://cryptodiffer.com/events

BitMart Shuts Down, Trading Ends Aug 26

New registrations, deposits and new trading orders were suspended at 01:30 UTC on July 26, hours after the exchange published its wind-down notice.

All trading services stop on August 26 at 01:00 UTC. Platform operations formally cease on January 31, 2027, with withdrawals available until then. BitMart urged users to close positions, complete KYC and pull assets out early.

The company cited its operating conditions, the market environment and a change in strategic direction. No buyer, successor venue or migration path was named.

👉 x.com/BitMartExchange/status/2081197305491845201

Samsung Wallet Adds Native Stablecoin Support

At Galaxy Unpacked on July 22, Samsung said Wallet will move beyond cards and cash to hold stablecoins natively, folding payments, rewards and digital assets into one app.

Product manager Lee Dinham said the move would make Samsung one of the first major mobile brands to bring native stablecoins to a smartphone, for fast and trusted transfers of digital value.

No stablecoins, launch window or partners were named. Galaxy owners in the US have been able to buy crypto inside Wallet through Coinbase since October 2025, a tie-up that covered more than 75 million devices.

👉 crypto.news/samsung-wallet-to-add-stablecoin-support-as-crypto-push-expands

NVIDIA & SK Group Build $500B+ AI Factories

SK Group and NVIDIA expanded their partnership on July 24 into a $500 billion-plus programme covering AI factories and next-generation memory across Korea.

SK Telecom will build a 2-gigawatt-scale AI Cloud on NVIDIA's DSX platform with Vera Rubin accelerated computing and SK hynix HBM4 memory, with the first AI factory planned for 2027.

SK hynix separately signed a long-term AI memory supply deal with NVIDIA, co-developing next-generation HBM for large language model training, agentic AI and physical AI.

"Together with SK Telecom and SK hynix, we are building a new generation of AI factories that will power Korea's next wave of growth," said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.

👉 nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/sk-group-and-nvidia-expand-strategic-partnership-across-ai-factories-and-next-generation-memory

Storj Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in U.S. Court

Storj Labs, the company behind the decentralized cloud storage network, filed for voluntary Chapter 11 reorganization on July 26 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.

The company says the filing resolves legacy obligations from an earlier chapter of the business, while operations, service and the network keep running normally with no anticipated interruption for customers.

"The business underneath is strong and right-sized. What holds it back are legacy obligations from an earlier chapter. This process lets us resolve them in an orderly way," said Kaloyan Raev, Director of Software Engineering at Storj.

Storj also intends to propose a mechanism for token holders to participate in equity of the restructured company, subject to court approval and creditor priority. STORJ trades near $0.074, down about 75% over the past year.

👉 storj.io/blog/storj-announces-voluntary-financial-restructuring-to-resolve-legacy-liabilities-and-position-the-business-for-growth

WEMIX's Contract Hijacked, $6.25M Illicitly Minted

An attacker seized owner privileges over the smart contract that issues WEMIX's dollar-pegged stablecoin on July 26, abnormally minting around $6.25M worth of tokens.

The freshly minted stablecoin was swapped into WEMIX and USDC, and roughly $724K was bridged off WEMIX 3.0 to Ethereum and BNB Chain before it could be stopped. No user wallets were compromised.

In response, WEMIX suspended all WEMIX 3.0 bridges (including Chainlink CCIP and the PLAY Bridge), paused affected liquidity pools and the stablecoin module, flagged the attacker's addresses and asked exchanges to freeze the funds. Blockchain security firms are tracing the flows.

It is the network's second major security incident in about 18 months, after roughly $6M was drained from the Play Bridge Vault in February 2025.

👉 cointelegraph.com/news/wemix-attacker-moves-724k-contract-breach

Telegram Adds Rich Text Editor & Communities

Communities link several groups, channels and bots into one unit — members see its other chats and join them instantly, with the whole set collapsed into a single chat list item. Admins mark each chat visible or hidden and can limit who adds more.

Premium gets a rich text editor: headings, tables, lists, quotes and code blocks, photos and video mid-message, and up to 32,768 characters in a single message.

Bots can now answer one person inside a group, keeping greetings, menus, errors and confirmations out of everyone else's feed. GIF search spans 350 million GIFs across 36 languages, indexed offline with open-source models and no third party involved.

👉 telegram.org/blog/communities-editor-invisible-messages

Strategy Grows Its USD Reserve to $3.75 Billion

Strategy said it added $525M to its USD reserve this week, lifting the cash pile to $3.75B — enough to cover roughly 2.1 years of its preferred-stock dividends and debt interest.

The reserve is designed to service those obligations without touching Strategy's 843,775 BTC (about $63B), a position it has held unchanged for weeks as it raised cash through share sales rather than new coin buys.

Separately, a filing shows Strategy repurchased $25M of its STRC "Stretch" variable-rate preferred — the first buyback executed under a $1B Digital Credit Securities repurchase program authorized on June 29, aimed at supporting STRC's price near its $100 par after it slid to record lows.

👉 x.com/saylor/status/2081711984936915201

Thai SEC Accuses Bitkub of Hiding a $47M Hack

Thailand's SEC has filed a criminal complaint against Bitkub — the country's largest crypto exchange — and two former directors, alleging they concealed a 2021 hack from the regulator.

About $47M (1.7 billion baht) across 16 assets was drained from a Bitkub wallet in May 2021. From May to October that year, the exchange's daily filings to the SEC allegedly showed no change in holdings, masking the loss.

Bitkub says it deliberately withheld the breach to avoid triggering a bank run, not to defraud anyone. Its co-founders personally bought replacement assets in the same amounts, so it says neither the exchange nor customers lost funds — and the SEC reportedly confirmed its holdings were intact as of September 2025.

The case now sits with Thailand's Economic Crime Suppression Division, and prosecutors will decide whether to bring it to court. Bitkub is privately held; its KUB token showed no sharp reaction.

👉 bangkokpost.com/business/general/3290607/sec-files-criminal-complaint-over-bitkubs-alleged-concealment-of-b17bn-hack

Dango Is Winding Down, L1 Shuts Off on Aug 13

Dango, a perpetuals DEX running on its own Layer-1, is shutting down after concluding there is no viable path to lasting commercial success. The team cited a short cash runway, legal and compliance delays, team departures and tough market conditions.

Trading halts on July 29 (12:00 UTC), and the Dango L1 blockchain shuts down permanently on August 13. Open positions settle at oracle prices and all balances convert to USDC.

"Despite our best effort, various reasons have led us to conclude there is no viable path to a lasting commercial success," the team said. Users should close positions and withdraw before July 29; any assets left behind will auto-return to their original Ethereum deposit addresses as USDC.

Dango was built by Left Curve Software and raised a $3.6M seed in November 2024 led by Lemniscap and Hack VC. It has no live token.

👉 thedefiant.io/news/defi/perp-dex-dango-to-wind-down-will-halt-trading-july-29

SparkKitty Malware Found on App Store & Google Play

A new cross-platform malware dubbed SparkKitty has been discovered on both Apple's App Store and Google Play, targeting cryptocurrency users by scanning photos for wallet recovery phrases.

Instead of monitoring your clipboard or keystrokes, SparkKitty uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to search your photo gallery for seed phrase screenshots, passwords, QR codes, and other sensitive data before sending them to attacker-controlled servers.

Researchers found the malware hidden inside fake crypto, messaging, and entertainment apps, with one Android app surpassing 10,000 downloads before removal.

👉 theblock.co/post/409716/sparkkitty-malware-hidden-in-mobile-apps-scans-photos-for-crypto-wallet-seed-phrases

AI's Next Trillion-Dollar Opportunity Isn't Software — It's Services

A new article from Sequoia Capital's Julien Bek argues that the next $1T AI company won't sell software, it will sell completed work, with AI operating behind the scenes.

The industry is shifting from AI copilots, which help professionals perform tasks, to AI autopilots, which deliver the end result directly. Instead of helping accountants close the books, AI companies will simply close them.

Today, software engineering accounts for nearly 50% of all AI agent usage, demonstrating that AI has already reached the point where it can handle most intelligence-heavy work autonomously. As models continue to improve, the same transition is expected across legal, finance, healthcare, insurance, IT, and procurement.

According to Sequoia, businesses spend roughly $6 on services for every $1 spent on software, making labor budgets a far larger market than software subscriptions.

The firm's thesis is that the biggest AI-native companies will first automate outsourced, standardized services, where customers already pay for outcomes, before expanding into more judgment-intensive work as AI capabilities continue to evolve.

👉 sequoiacap.com/article/services-the-new-software

World Foundation Raises $52.5M in Strategic WLD Token Sale

World Foundation, the nonprofit behind the World protocol, has raised $52.5 million through a strategic sale of WLD tokens, with all purchased tokens subject to a one-year lockup.

The funding round was led by Pantera Capital and included Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and other investors.

The proceeds will be used to accelerate the adoption of World ID, the project's proof-of-humanity infrastructure, for enterprises, consumers, and AI agents worldwide.

World says demand for Proof of Human is rising as AI-generated content and digital identities become increasingly difficult to distinguish from real users. The protocol has already integrated World ID with platforms including Zoom, DocuSign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder.

To date, more than 39 million users have joined the network, with 18+ million completing Orb verification and generating over 475 million World ID proofs. Including this raise, the project has secured approximately $492.5 million in total funding.

👉 theblock.co/post/409610/world-foundation-wld-token-sale-funding

​​Treasuries & ETFs Board. Crypto Accumulation and Capital Flows

ETF demand showed continued recovery with positive but mixed flows. Public companies maintained selective treasury expansion, mainly in Ethereum.

Corporate Treasuries

- BitMine acquired ~9,946 ETH ($19.4M) in its latest weekly purchase, lifting holdings to 5.787M ETH.
- Strive added 79 BTC ($5.20M), reaching ~20,000 BTC.
- Strategy raised its USD Reserve to $3.75B, started STRC buybacks, and kept its Bitcoin holdings at 843,775 BTC.

ETF Flows

Bitcoin ETFs recorded modest net inflows early in the week that later decelerated.
Ethereum ETFs posted ~$104M net inflows for the third straight positive week and led broader crypto ETF flows.

Wall Street is Racing to Trade Like Crypto: 24/7

The market that never sleeps is coming for the one that does. America already moved, the UK just followed, and the map is splitting in real time.

Korea targets 24h by 2027, Canada called it disruptive then started building it anyway. Germany warns against it, China still trades four hours a day. Everyone is heading the same way. Some just refuse to say it out loud.

GRVT Caps Perp Funding, Upgrades Earn Product

Most leveraged positions are closed because of the funding, charged every few hours with no ceiling, quietly eroding the trade. Stable Funding Perps publish the annual rate up front, a target of ~4% to high single digits, and charge it once a day.

Mark the date: GRVT lists on July 30, with both products built so that capital never has to choose between earning yield and standing ready to trade.

Grvt Earn adds three curated tiers from $1 with no lock-ups: Savings, Balanced (target ~4.5% p.a.) and Opportunistic (target ~11% p.a.). Targets, not guarantees. An Earn balance can also back trades as collateral while it earns.

👉 x.com/grvt_io/status/2081731808647958664?s=20