FinTax, a crypto native financial platform, has completed a seed funding round led by YZi Labs through EASY Residence, with participation from other investors, including Amber, Hash House, Pundi AI, Waverider International, and Nexus Holdings.

 

Although the amount raised has yet to be disclosed, FinTax now has a post money valuation of $40 million. According to the FinTax team, the new funding will be used to expand the company’s global coverage and further develop its use of AI for complex financial and tax workflows.

 

 

Despite primarily offering crypto native solutions, such as a crypto asset financial ERP, a global tax compliance platform, a blockchain audit platform, and an institutional grade financial product aggregation hub, AI remains at the core of FinTax’s operations.

 

With the new funding, the FinTax team plans to expand beyond Asia Pacific and North America into Europe and the Middle East. The company currently serves more than 70 institutional clients, including crypto exchanges, mining companies, and publicly listed crypto companies, while claiming an annual client retention rate of nearly 90%.

 

In a separate development in the crypto funding sector, crypto project City Protocol also raised $11 million in a funding round that included Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, CMT Digital, Stratified Capital, Adaverse, and Mirana.

 

The funding will be used to expand the city protocol’s tokenization efforts, including its plan to bring structured investment strategies on-chain.

 

Crypto funding continues to attract significant interest from venture capital firms looking to invest in crypto startups and companies with strong growth potential. According to a recent report from The Block, more than $8.1 billion has been invested in the sector this year alone.

Image credit: news1.kr

 

Jeonbuk Bank, one of South Korea’s commercial banks, has partnered with Ripple to enhance cross-border remittances and enable real-time transaction settlements.

 

The partnership is aimed at eliminating common bottlenecks associated with the settlement of transactions by traditional institutions, which often involve several intermediaries. 

 

 

Through the partnership, Jeonbuk Bank plans to leverage the real-time settlement capabilities of Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure, reducing the settlement time for cross-border remittances from minutes to seconds while enabling 24/7 operations.

 

“With this partnership with Ripple, JB Jeonbuk Bank is ready to move beyond its role as a regional bank and emerge as a digital finance leader that meets global standards,” said Park Choon-won, President of JB Jeonbuk Bank. 

 

“This partnership will become a new growth engine for the bank, and we will lead innovation that reshapes the financial paradigm, going beyond the adoption of new technology.”

 

Ripple’s partnership with Jeonbuk Bank isn’t the first of its kind with a South Korean institution. In April of this year, Ripple partnered with KBank, South Korea’s first internet-only bank. The partnership aimed to enable KBank to more securely manage its digital assets while leveraging Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure for cross-border remittances.

 

That same month, Ripple also partnered with Kyobo Life Insurance, one of South Korea’s leading life insurance companies. Through the partnership, Kyobo leveraged Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure to tokenize government bonds.

 

Institutional Adoption Continues to Grow

 

Despite South Korea’s tightening regulation around crypto, institutional involvement in the sector continues to grow rapidly in the country.

 

According to a report from Tiger Research, a South Korean crypto research firm, well over 195 crypto-related partnerships involving approximately 150 institutions had been tracked as of mid-year, with many of these partnerships revolving around stablecoins and cross-border remittances, custody, security token offerings, and real-world asset tokenization.

 

Former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has been appointed to the Board of Directors of cryptocurrency exchange OKX.

 

The appointment, announced in a recent OKX blog post, comes three years after Cuomo joined the exchange in 2023 as a member of its advisory team, where he advised the company on its regulatory and institutional strategy in the United States.

 

Image credit: x.com

 

"Governor Cuomo has been a thoughtful voice for OKX for years, and his move to the board formalizes a relationship that has already shaped how we approach the U.S. market," said Star Xu, Founder and CEO of OKX.

 

"As we build OKX into the infrastructure layer for both traditional and digital finance, we need people who understand how governments, institutions, and markets actually think. That's exactly what he brings."

 

Cuomo's appointment to the OKX Board comes as the exchange accelerates its expansion efforts. Last month, it signed a joint venture with Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, to build next-generation infrastructure for digital assets.

 

The infrastructure is intended to bridge the gap between traditional finance and the crypto market, giving more than 120 million registered OKX users access to ICE futures and tokenized NYSE-listed equities. Following the partnership, ICE reportedly invested $200 million in OKX, valuing the exchange at $25 billion.

 

Despite the regulatory challenges it has faced in the United States, including being barred from operating after violating anti-money laundering laws and being ordered to pay $504 million in penalties and forfeitures, OKX has continued to deepen its presence in the country following its relaunch a few months after the ban.

 

Since its relaunch, OKX has maintained compliance with U.S. laws by strengthening its anti-money laundering and know your customer systems while strategically appointing key executives, including former Barclays executive Roshan Robert as CEO of OKX U.S. and Andrew Cuomo as a board member and Co-Chair of the OKX ICE joint venture.

 

 

Bank of America has announced the appointment of senior executives Kevin Milson and Sonali Theisen in its latest move to drive AI adoption and implementation across its global markets group.

 

Kevin Milson was named Head of Platforms and AI Transformation, where he will help lead the broader implementation of artificial intelligence across the bank's global markets platforms.

 

Sonali Theisen was appointed Head of Global Digital Assets Platform. In this new role, she will oversee the design and development of the bank's digital asset initiatives while retaining her current position as Head of Global FICC E Trading and Markets Strategic Investments.

 

FICC, short for Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities, is the division that handles sales, trading, market making, research, and risk management across several core asset classes for institutional clients.

 

According to a memo seen by Reuters, Amy Avery and her Analytics, Modeling and Insights team will also join the bank's Global Platforms group, where she will oversee data-driven insights across the company.

 

The move by Bank of America comes as several other financial institutions, particularly banks and asset managers, make strategic appointments in an effort to adopt and integrate blockchain technology into their infrastructure.

 

In January this year, Morgan Stanley appointed Amy Oldenburg to lead its digital asset strategy following the firm's filing for spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs.

 

Royal Bank of Canada, JPMorgan, and Standard Chartered have also made strategic appointments, naming executives to lead and expand their digital asset strategies. Meanwhile, Vanguard, one of the world's largest asset managers, has announced that it is seeking its first Head of Digital Assets.

 

 

Zapper, the popular DeFi dashboard and portfolio tracker, will wind down its operations after about seven years in the crypto industry.

 

"After close to seven years building Zapper, I regret to announce that Zapper will be winding down," said Seb Audet, co-founder and CEO. "We evaluated a number of different options, pursued some to the fullest extent possible, and came to the realization that an orderly wind down is the best course of action."

 

Before its decision to shut down, Zapper allowed users to track and visualize assets, liabilities, NFTs, and DeFi positions, including staking, liquidity pools, and loans, across multiple blockchains in real time. According to Audet, Zapper served more than 2 million monthly users and processed more than $13 billion in peak transaction volume.

 

Zapper's shutdown will be completed on August 3, with the team discontinuing all of its services, including zapper.xyz, its mobile apps, and its API services. The team also said it will send an email to existing API users to help with the transition.

 

Zapper's decision to shut down comes shortly after crypto exchange AscendEX wrapped up its operations, citing regulatory pressure and its failure to obtain authorization under the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, regulation, which fully took effect on July 1, 2026.

 

The AscendEX team also cited financial and operational challenges, stating that users will no longer be able to open accounts, deposit assets, trade, swap, stake, lend, or participate in referral or promotional campaigns. Account access will remain available only for limited offboarding purposes.

 

The shutdowns of Zapper and AscendEX come amid a broader wave of closures across the crypto industry. Since the start of the year, approximately 70 to 75 crypto projects and firms have either shut down or filed for bankruptcy.

 

Last month, blockchain protocol Radiant Capital shut down after failing to recover from an exploit it suffered months earlier. Tether also discontinued its Alloy platform, citing low user activity and weak market demand. Binance also shut down its NFT marketplace.

 

Swift has launched a blockchain-based ledger that enables banks to execute cross-border payments 24 hours a day, seven days a week, using tokenized deposits while maintaining final settlement on existing infrastructure.

 

Image credit: x.com 

 

According to Swift, 17 banks from six continents are set to pilot transactions on its blockchain-based ledger. Among the banks participating in the pilot program are Wells Fargo, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Standard Chartered, Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, HSBC, DBS, and Lloyds Bank, among others.

 

Swift says the shared ledger will provide participating banks with a secure orchestration layer that allows them to issue tokenized deposits on their respective ledgers, enabling customers' funds to move quickly, including on weekends. Participating banks are also expected to benefit from improved client experience and enhanced global liquidity, without compromising their existing compliance, risk, and operational standards.

 

"With our new ledger capability, we're extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money. It allows tokenized value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resiliency, security, and compliance global finance requires," said Thierry Chilosi, Chief Business Officer at Swift.

 

"The strong support from banks shows the practical value of this approach, one that will help scale benefits globally while creating a foundation for future innovation in areas like programmable money and agentic commerce."

 

Swift said it took nine months to build the blockchain-based ledger, with the team incorporating feedback from financial institutions throughout the development process. According to the company, 75% of payments on the shared ledger will reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, and often within seconds. Swift said it also plans for the network to help meet the G20 target for faster international payments.

 

About Swift 

Swift, short for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a global entity that enables banks and other institutions to exchange standardized, secure instructions for cross-border payments, securities, trade, and treasury transactions.

 

Since its inception, Swift has connected more than 11,500 institutions in over 200 countries. Before its most recent blockchain-based ledger pilot, Swift had conducted multiple interoperability pilots, testing tokenized assets, stablecoins, CBDCs, and the integration of traditional financial rails with blockchains.

 

 

Ripple, the leading blockchain technology company building digital infrastructure for cross-border payments, has secured a full Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier in Luxembourg.

 

Image credit: x.com 

 

The full CASP authorization, announced on Monday, comes shortly after Ripple received preliminary approval from Luxembourg's financial regulator in June. With this license, Ripple is now fully compliant with the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, enabling it to offer its crypto services to businesses and institutions across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area.

 

"This CASP authorization means Ripple enters the post-transitional MiCA era fully compliant and ready to scale," said Cassie Craddock, Managing Director for the United Kingdom and Europe at Ripple.

 

"The institutions we work with across Europe are looking to build their digital asset services alongside regulated partners, and Ripple is licensed and ready to meet that demand."

 

Ripple now joins a small group of digital asset firms, including Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, Bitstamp, and OKX, that have obtained full authorization under MiCA. The company says it now holds more than 75 regulatory licenses worldwide, in addition to the Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license it secured in February.

 

Elsewhere on the regulatory front, the MiCA July 1 deadline is now fully in effect, with unlicensed digital asset firms required to stop serving clients in the European Union. It is estimated that more than 80 percent of the approximately 1,200 previously registered firms that lacked full licenses by late June have either exited the European Union or restricted their operations there.

 

Ripple's full CASP license comes shortly after the company was named among more than 140 members of the Open Standard consortium, a group of companies collaborating on the launch of OpenUSD (OUSD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The company also recently invested in Flutterwave, Africa's largest fintech unicorn.

 

Robinhood Chain, the mainnet blockchain of Robinhood Markets Inc., is now live after about 5 months of running its public testnet.

 

The mainnet chain, unveiled at the recent "Robinhood Presents: The World is Flat" event at the Old Royal Naval College in London, is built on the Arbitrum blockchain and aims to bridge the gap between traditional and decentralized finance.

 

“Decentralized finance unlocks possibilities beyond what traditional finance can offer, but historically, it has required technical expertise to navigate,” said Johann Kerbrat, SVP and General Manager of Crypto and International at Robinhood.

 

“We’re bringing the best of traditional finance and DeFi together, and in doing so, expanding financial ownership to every corner of the globe.”

 

According to the Robinhood team, Uniswap will serve as the chain's primary public liquidity protocol and will deploy a dedicated Automated Market Maker (AMM), while decentralized trading firm Pleiades will also deploy a proprietary AMM and serve as the chain's primary proprietary trading venue. The chain also features fast block times and a permissionless environment where builders can innovate seamlessly.

 

Other Product Launches 

 

The Robinhood team also launched new stock tokens that allow eligible users in more than 120 countries to trade directly 24/7 on the Robinhood Chain. Users will be able to trade spot tokens through decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Lighter, and 1Inch. The first set of these stock tokens, known as Classic Stock Tokens, will be available to European users through the Robinhood app.

 

Robinhood Earn, a product that allows users to lend their Global Dollar (USDG) stablecoin at an estimated annual percentage yield (APY) of 7%, was also rolled out. This lending infrastructure is powered by Morpho Protocol.

 

The launch of the Robinhood Chain comes shortly after Robinhood trimmed its workforce by 10% last month, a move aimed at achieving greater impact with a leaner team. Following its recent entry into Canada and Singapore, Robinhood has also revealed plans to enter the UK market. Robinhood currently serves 28 million users across 38 countries and three continents.

 

 

Coinbase, Visa, and Stripe have joined the Open Standard consortium, which comprises more than 140 companies working to support the development of the OpenUSD (OUSD) stablecoin.

 

 

Announced on June 30, 2026, OpenUSD (OUSD) is a United States dollar-pegged stablecoin developed by Open Standard, a consortium that includes BlackRock, Google, Ripple, Solana, Aave, and more than 140 companies.

 

Although the OpenUSD token has not yet launched, it is expected to go live later this year. According to the core development team, the OUSD stablecoin will be backed on a one-to-one basis by the United States dollar and U.S. Treasuries. Because it is designed to scale, businesses can mint and redeem the stablecoin at no cost, with no volume caps for founding partners.

 

"Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that is open, low cost, high throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned with their interests," Open Standard CEO Zach Adam said.

 

"We are thrilled to bring together more than 140 businesses to launch OpenUSD. It is a stablecoin built for the internet economy and designed by the businesses growing it."

 

Another distinguishing feature of the OpenUSD stablecoin is its shared yield model. After the operating costs of running the stablecoin infrastructure are deducted, users and participants will share almost all of the earnings generated from the stablecoin's reserves based on network activity.

 

Shortly after the announcement of the OpenUSD stablecoin, Circle's CRCL stock fell more than 16%, with many analysts attributing the decline to the launch of OUSD. Despite the sharp drop, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire welcomed competition in the stablecoin sector, saying that USDC remains the most widely adopted stablecoin for institutional use while reiterating the company's expansion plans. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino also welcomed the launch of OUSD in a post on X, saying, "Player 2 has entered the game."

 

 

Fomo, a cryptocurrency trading platform, has raised $75 million in a Series B funding round led by Index Ventures, with Union Square Ventures and Benchmark also participating.

 

 

According to the team, the new funding will be used to expand Fomo’s asset classes, including equities, perpetuals, and prediction markets, while scaling its engineering team and further investing in its trading and social platform.

 

Through its consumer-focused platform and the removal of some technical barriers associated with on-chain trading, such as unpredictable gas fees, fragmented blockchains, and complex token bridges, Fomo aims to seamlessly onboard users on-chain.

 

“Most trading products aren’t built with the user in mind. They are dull, hard to understand, and make you want to rip your hair out,” said Paul Erlanger, Co-founder and CEO of Fomo.

 

“Each decision we make at Fomo is made to bring our users joy. Fomo is accessible, social, and understandable in 15 minutes. We believe people should be able to access global markets instantly, share opinions and convictions through their network, and participate without needing to understand the technical complexity underneath it all.”

 

By unifying liquidity, automatically routing transactions, and supporting familiar traditional payment methods such as Apple Pay, Fomo aims to make on-chain trading more accessible. With the inclusion of new asset classes, Fomo is positioned to reach more users globally.

 

About Fomo 

Fomo is a consumer-focused, social-first crypto trading app designed to make on-chain trading simple and accessible. Everything it does revolves around its goal of simplifying crypto trading. To achieve this, Fomo integrates social trading features that allow users on the platform to discover trending assets, connect with top-performing traders, and track open positions.

 

Since launching last year, Fomo has done several impressive things, including becoming the largest cross-chain crypto trading app, raising more than $90 million in seed funding, growing its user base to more than 625,000, and processing over $4 billion in trading volume to date.

 

 

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, has announced plans to shut down its Alloy platform, along with the platform’s main product, Alloy Tether (aUSDT).

 

According to Tether, the decision was based on a review of user activity levels, market demand, and the company’s broader priorities, with the team planning to focus its resources on areas where it sees stronger user demand, deeper liquidity, and longer-term market opportunity.

 

The wind-down will take place in phases, with Tether disabling both aUSDT minting and the opening of new positions on the Alloy platform. Users will, however, be able to continue redeeming their aUSDT and withdrawing their Tether Gold (XAUT) collateral from the Alloy platform for the next three months, until September 17, 2026.

 

This is not the first time Tether has shut down one of its products. In 2024, the stablecoin issuer discontinued its euro-pegged stablecoin, Euro Tether (EURT), citing low demand. In February of this year, it discontinued issuing its yuan-pegged stablecoin, Chinese Yuan Tether (CNHT), due to low demand and usage.

 

About Alloy 

Alloy by Tether is an open platform launched by Tether that allows users to create Tethered assets, a category of digital assets designed to track the price of referenced assets such as the United States dollar, using over-collateralized assets like Tether Gold (XAUT).

 

 

Hsiao Wei Wang, co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), has announced her departure from the foundation, shortly after co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak left in February this year.

 

“After my sabbatical, I have decided to step down as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation, effective today,” Wang wrote in an X post.

 

“Serving as EF co-executive director let me see the bigger picture of how the Ethereum community collaborates. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, not only at the EF, but across the builders, researchers, educators, validators, users, and many other contributors who have helped build, maintain, secure, and use the infrastructure and applications on top of it.”

 

Wang joined the EF research team in 2017, where she worked on protocol design, consensus mechanisms, sharding proofs-of-concept, and distributed systems. In March 2025, she was appointed co-executive director and board member alongside Tomasz Stańczak. During her time at the EF, Wang contributed to a range of projects, including sharding research, data availability sampling, EIP 4844, ETHTaipei, and the Taipei Seminar.

 

Reacting to her departure, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commended Wang for her contributions to the foundation. “I still remember her early days in the Ethereum research community, first outside the Foundation and then inside it, and the thought and care she put into making Ethereum research and consensus work more organized and legible,” Buterin wrote in an X post.

 

“Last year, she, along with Stańczak, voluntarily took on the burden of what is perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum and, realistically, a challenging time for all of humanity. She handled the task skillfully and gracefully, and has constantly strived to find and insist on outcomes that are right both for the Ethereum protocol and for the human beings who build and maintain it.”

 

Wang’s departure from the Ethereum Foundation comes as several notable researchers have left the organization, including Tomasz Stańczak and Josh Stark, who departed in April. So far, at least eight senior researchers have left the Ethereum Foundation this year.