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Kraken and Coinbase Bring Perps Onshore as BTC Tops $67K Intraday

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WATCH

DeFi's Near-Death Moment | Mike Silagadze on Ether.fi, Security, and What Comes Next

How close did DeFi come to a systemic collapse? Camila Russo sits down with Mike Silagadze, co-founder and CEO of Ether.fi, to walk through the Kelp exploit and the DeFi United rescue, and to argue the real lesson is operational security and app-layer responsibility over smart-contract risk — what he calls moving past "decentralization theater."

CEFI

Kraken and Coinbase Bring Perps Onshore as US Derivatives Markets Shift

Kraken launched CFTC-regulated crypto perpetual futures Monday via Bitnomial, while Coinbase introduced four thematic equity-index perpetuals on US soil covering AI, Big Tech, semiconductors, and US energy. Kraken's are crypto-underlying contracts intended to compete with the offshore perps venues like Binance and Bybit have dominated; Coinbase's reference US-equity baskets, a category that didn't exist on a US-licensed venue 24 hours ago.

Why this matters: The US-regulated perp infrastructure went from zero to hero this quarter; CFTC's path for DCMs to convert perpetual-style futures into true perps cleared Friday, and the two largest US exchanges deployed today.

MARKETS

Bitcoin Tops $67,000 to Two-Week High After Trump Declares US-Iran Deal Complete and Hormuz Reopening

Bitcoin climbed past $67,000 intraday Monday — a two-week high after President Trump declared the US-Iran deal complete and authorized reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude fell about 4% as oil pricing absorbed the de-escalation, and roughly $150 million in crypto short positions liquidated as BTC ran. The token has since pulled back to ~$65,700, holding most of the day's gain.

Why this matters: Bitcoin has traded the US-Iran conflict as a binary risk dial all spring. The $67K test also matters technically: it's the level above last week's 200-week MA reclaim that institutional allocators key their long-cycle weight to.

DEFI

Standard Chartered Sets UNI 2030 Price Target at 40x Current Levels

Standard Chartered initiated research coverage of Uniswap with a $100 UNI target for end-2030, roughly 40 times current levels, in a note from Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital-assets research. Kendrick framed the DEX as the natural venue for trading tokenized real-world assets and pointed to protocol fee revenue and the dormant fee switch as the value drivers behind the call.

Why this matters: A sell-side desk valuing a governance token off protocol fees treats Uniswap like a public company with a revenue line.

BLOCKCHAINS

Sui Processes $65 Billion in Stablecoin Transfers in Five Days After Zeroing Out Fees

Sui processed nearly $65 billion in stablecoin transfers in five days after removing fees on stablecoin sends on June 10, per network data. The gasless design lets users move USDC and other dollar tokens without holding the native SUI token for gas, a structure the foundation is positioning for institutional treasuries and agent-driven payments that send at high frequency.

Why this matters: Removing the gas token from the user's path closes the widest onboarding gap stablecoins face on smart-contract chains. The bet is that fee-free settlement pulls payment volume that would otherwise route through Tron or a centralized ledger.

CEFI

Strategy Buys 1,587 Bitcoin for $100M Below Its Blended Cost Basis, Lifting Stack to 846,842 BTC

Strategy bought another 1,587 BTC for $100 million at a $63,024 average, lifting its stack to 846,842 BTC. The average is roughly 17% below the company's $75,656 blended cost basis across the full treasury. The buy follows last week's 1,550-BTC purchase that ran 50x the 32-BTC sale Strategy disclosed the week prior — Saylor's structured-capital playbook is now operating week-over-week.

Why this matters: The Strategy capital-markets machine is working through the drawdown exactly as advertised: issue paper into strength, hold cash through weakness, deploy at materially lower prices.

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Deprecated Aztec Connect Contract Drained of $2.1M After Shutdown — An attacker exploited a proof-verification flaw in Aztec Connect's deprecated RollupProcessorV3 contract to drain about $2.1 million, including 909 ETH, from a privacy bridge Aztec Labs shut down three years ago and can no longer control.

Thetanuts Finance: $2.1M Attack, Partial White-Hat Recovery — A separate $2.1 million attack hit Thetanuts Finance's structured-products contracts the same morning; security firm Blockaid posted the exploit transaction and exploiter address within minutes, partial white-hat recovery underway.

Blockchain Association Takes BRCA Preservation Fight to the Senate Floor — A Blockchain Association delegation took the BRCA developer-protection provision of the CLARITY Act to the Senate floor, reporting meetings with more than half the chamber ahead of the August recess deadline.

Paradigm Leads $9 Million Round in Latin American Stablecoin App El Dorado — Paradigm led a roughly $9 million round in El Dorado, the stablecoin payments app with more than a million users across Latin America, extending the firm's push into dollar rails for emerging markets.

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