The week was packed with developments across blockchain, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, and finance. 🟢UNDP and Stellar extended their partnership and plan to expand the use of blockchain-based payments across UNDP country offices through 2027. This is another example of blockchain moving beyond the crypto market and becoming part of real-world payment infrastructure. 🟢Swift is moving in the same direction. The payment network announced that its blockchain ledger is ready for the first stage of deployment. Seventeen major banks will participate in the pilot and test international transfers using tokenized deposits.
🟢JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC are considering the acquisition of the Fiserv payment network. The deal could help major U.S. banks strengthen their positions and reduce dependence on current fee restrictions.
🟢The crypto market also had an active week. Stricter MiCA rules took effect in Europe on July 1, leading to restrictions for Binance and USDT users in the EU. Even so, Binance accounts for 57% of exchange stablecoin reserves, about 80% of the traditional-stock futures market, and 61% of RWA trading volume among centralized exchanges.
🟢CryptoQuant recorded one of the strongest recoveries in Bitcoin demand in 2026. Over the week, aggregate demand improved from −500,000 BTC to −75,000 BTC. Most activity came from futures-market buyers, while spot demand remains weak. 🟢Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for approximately $225 million. After the transaction, the company still held 843,775 BTC. The funds were used to pay dividends on preferred shares and replenish its U.S. dollar reserve.
🟢In the United States, discussions around a strategic Bitcoin reserve continue, but the project is facing legal and organizational challenges. Donald Trump’s administration has not yet determined which agency should manage the reserve. Meanwhile, reports claim that Trump has earned more than $1.5 billion from the crypto market since the start of his presidential term.
🟢BonkDAO lost about $20 million in an attack on its governance system. The attacker purchased roughly $4.4 million worth of BONK, gained enough voting power to approve a self-authored proposal, and withdrew funds from the DAO treasury.
🟢Interpol summarized the results of Operation First Light 2026, conducted across 97 countries. Authorities arrested 5,811 people, seized $293 million in illicit assets, froze more than 31,000 bank accounts, and solved nearly 24,000 cases.
🟢A significant share of the week’s news focused on artificial intelligence. SpaceXAI introduced its new flagship Grok 4.5 model for coding, AI agents, and office tasks. According to the company’s internal tests, the model performs at the level of GPT-5.5 and Fable, outperforms Opus 4.8, and ranks first in Harvey’s Legal Agent Benchmark. 🟢OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work powered by GPT-5.6. The new AI agent can independently complete multi-step tasks and create spreadsheets, presentations, documents, and web applications. 🟢AI growth continues to increase demand for computing capacity. Former Bitcoin miner TeraWulf signed a 20-year agreement with Anthropic. The company will provide capacity from a new data center for AI infrastructure and expects the contract to generate about $19 billion.
🟢In the Cassator Corp. ecosystem, the 250th Anniversary Staking Event is still underway. Twenty-four days remain, and users have already opened more than 200 staking positions totaling over $130,000. The team is also preparing a new update that will soon become available in app stores. Overall, the week highlighted several important trends: blockchain is being used more actively in international payments, the crypto market remains under regulatory pressure, and artificial intelligence continues to reshape technology, infrastructure, and finance.
At the same time, we remain confident that people will continue to play the central role in the future, while the tokenization of real-world assets - RWA - will become one of the key areas of development. Sl8 (Slate) | Telegram Chat | X (Twitter)