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What happened in crypto in the past week? This week . I found a way to expose myself to BTC via BlackRock, using Freetrade. Feel free to check them. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: Bitcoin holds $60K as Lending Market draws several major US banks to offer Bitcoin-backed credit facilities directly to clients. American Bitcoin Corp added 500 BTC to its treasury on July 6, reaching 8K BTC in total. Strategy holds BTC buying to build up a cash reserve, and they even sold 3588 BTC between June 29 and July 5, raising $216M under a board approved Bitcoin Monetization Program, authorizing up to $1.25B in BTC sales for dividends, reserve building, and share buybacks. Bitcoin ETFs logged eight straight weeks of outflows, shedding over $4B, the longest streak since the product launched. Whale Bitcoin deposits are signalling a big move ahead, as deposits to exchanges climber to nearly 49.000 BTC, reflecting a deliberate repositioning rather than routine activity. Bitcoin is consolidating and leveraged longs come back.
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• Ethereum: Sharplink purchased 10.000 ETH at an average price of $1611, for the first time in eight months, as they simultaneously repurchased more than 2M of its own shares. For now they have 886.725 ETH as of June 28. Bitmine purchased approx $74M in ETH during the last week, and now controls nearly 5% of all Ethereum. ETH treasury firms are buying again mainly to average into weakness and position for long term ETH-as-infrastructure and staking yield, not because near term sentiment improved, as ETH is 50% below recent highs. A new Ethereum nonprofit launched on July1 with backing from Joe Lubin, Bitmine and Sharplink, aiming to coordinate ETH's outreach to banks and asset managers, aiming to be the institutional voice for ETH ecosystem. Ondo launched tokenized versions of BlackRock iShares S&P 500 ETF and Micron stock on Ethereum on July 2, under SEC rules. Funny enough, the product is not yet available to the US investors. Vitalik outlined a major ETH rebuild, comparing its scale to the 2022 Merge, targeting quantum safety, privacy, cheaper data storage, and a potential replacement of the EVM itself.
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• Altcoins and stablecoins: BNY added USDC minting and redemption to its Digital Asset Custody platform, giving its clients a direct way to convert dollars into USDC and back. Standard Chartered announced on July 2 that institutional clients can now mint and redeem USDC directly through the bank, as the first major bank to offer USDC minting. BlackRock and Ethene Labs announced that Aladdin, BlackRock's institutional risk platform, will support USDe, leading ENA to a 8% rise. Metamask lets you earn yield on your stablecoin balance, after they launched Money account, combining stablecoin yield, card spending, and trading in a single self-custodial balance. You can earn up to 4% variable appy on MUSD. Open USD is making waves as more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase announced Open USD on June 30, a stablecoin designed to share revenue with partners and charge no minting fees. Circle's stock fell 17% on the news. A new on-chain prediction market called World launched on Phantom wallet, offering fully onchain prediction on SOL prices and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Standard Chartered said that a DEFI token will beat BTC by 2030.
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• NFTs and blockchain games: I have also enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite engaging, I would say, with no significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new cards from the Verico land packs are here.

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• Good news: The SEC opened a 60-day public comment period on June 30, asking whether its ETF approval framework needs updating for crypto and prediction market funds. Solana backed a $6B crypto city, signing an agreement to support blockchain and crypto infrastructure for Alatau City, Kazakhstan's planned digital-first megacity. Kazakhstan's stock exchange also launched its first Solana ETF last week, adding regulated investor exposure to SOL in Central Asia. Solana is all over the news, Forward Industries purchased more than 500K SOL, lifting its holding to 7.55 milion SOL, and its shares jumped more than 17%. Taiwan passes the Virtual Asset Service Act, licensing, stablecoin issuance and rules, as well as penalties for non-adherence. RobinHood CEO said that crypto's next pjase is real-world assets. The IMF said on July 2 that tokenization can fundamentally change financial markets by compressing multi-day settlement into near-instant transactions. Securitize debuted on NYSE on July 2 and simultaneously token ized its own shares on SOL and AVAX. Kraken began accepting tokenized stocks as trading collateral on July 4.
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• Bad news: A Trump-linked Bitcoin Miner approved a reverse stock split, 1-for-15, consolidating 1.09B shares into 73M to maintain its Nasdaq listing (their stock reached a record low as Bitcoin traded below $60K). Interesting, Microstrategy MSTR returned 3x more than BTC over five years, but also drew down 81% at its worst versus BTC 73%. Are they worth the extra risk? The single largest liquidation day in crypto history wiped $19.16B, triggered by a tariff threat, not a hack. A governance attack drained $20M in BONK tokens from BonkDAO.
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• Joke of the week: Bernstein said that the line separating sportbooks, brokerages, and crypto exchanges is dissappearing, looking at DraftKings building its own exchange and at Coinbase acquiring a clearing firm to bring settlement in-house. Compared to a sitting president earning over $1B from memecoins, token sales, and crypto equity stakes, while his policies shaped the same market, this is a bit of child play. A senator wants to ban officialls from launching meme coins. Too little, too late, my friend!

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All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).

...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.