Until a judge rules, the legal standing of the company’s contracts, spending and share issuance is in doubt. Three complaints were filed on the 6th of August in Delaware’s Court of Chancery by Kathleen Allman, the mother of the late Nathan Allman, founder of Ondo Finance. When Nathan Allman died in late May at 32, he held three roles at once: CEO, sole director and controlling shareholder, according to the complaint. His death froze the company. His voting shares passed into his estate, so no one had the authority to exercise them, and with the single board seat empty, there was no director left to appoint a successor or call a meeting.

Ondo Finance ownership clash causes issues

The deadlock continued until a Hawaii probate court made his mother administrator of the estate on June 26, handing her the voting power. The estate is accusing Ian De Bode, the former president of Ondo Finance, of using the gap before probate closed to install himself. According to the filings, De Bode took advantage of the bylaws to declare himself CEO, then leaned on a shareholder agreement to name himself sole director and started acting alone.

Kathleen Allman’s suit argues Ondo Finance’s charter allowed the CEO vacancy to be filled only by a board decision, and since no board existed, De Bode’s appointment was void along with everything that followed. De Bode also allegedly leaned on corporate resources to pressure Kathleen into signing documents cementing his control, and he and Ondo’s outside lawyers refused her request for a shareholder list. After gaining her voting rights, Allman did not immediately fire De Bode.

After joining the board, she put an interim operating policy in place to keep the business running, and kept De Bode on as president while asking for basic company records, all of which De Bode and Ondo Finance’s counsel declined to recognize. De Bode has called Allman’s claims “meritless” and her decision to sue “regretful.” According to him, Ondo Finance still has the backing of “key stakeholders, including its lead investors and the Ondo Foundation.”

The Ondo Finance board said in a statement that it remains focused on serving users “without interruption” while it searches for a permanent successor. The company also recently named former Blockchain.com executive Adam Schlisman as its chief financial officer. Ondo Finance, founded in 2021 and backed by Coinbase, Wintermute, Tiger Global and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is leading the real-world asset market with about $3.5 billion in total value locked.

It runs products including the OUSG tokenized Treasury fund and the yield-bearing USDY token, but following the news of the dispute, ONDO fell about 6% over 24 hours to $0.35. The company is currently trading at roughly 84% below its December 2024 record of $2.14. More than 10 million ONDO was reportedly moved onto exchanges as the news spread, with some transfers tied to Ondo team wallets, and put the two-day drop at around 9%.

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The company said its dollar-backed USDC and euro-backed EURC are the only two Circle-issued tokens approved under the new framework. 

As a result, most leading dollar-pegged stablecoins, including Tether’s USDT, are no longer available through regulated crypto platforms serving the European Union’s approximately 450 million residents.

Circle stated that both USDC and EURC remain fully redeemable in fiat currency, with reserves managed under regulatory standards and disclosed publicly. 

The company also released its latest reserve report on August 3. Under MiCA, issuers must separate reserve assets, provide regular attestations, guarantee redemption rights, and meet governance requirements before exchanges can legally offer their stablecoins to European customers.

Reserve requirements drove Tether from the EU market

The transition period for MiCA concluded on July 1, after which the European Securities and Markets Authority instructed unauthorized crypto firms to cease operations. It also reminded consumers that only licensed crypto-asset service providers could legally operate throughout the European Union and European Economic Area.

A major challenge for large stablecoin issuers is MiCA’s reserve requirement. Stablecoins classified as significant must hold at least 60% of their reserves in bank deposits within the European Union. USDT satisfies the quantitative conditions for that designation.

Rather than meeting those requirements, Tether withdrew from the regulated European market and discontinued its euro-backed stablecoin, EURT. The company stated, “After careful consideration, we have made the decision to discontinue support for EURT’s.” 

Tether added that the move reflected its strategic direction while regulatory frameworks continue evolving. 

Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino also argued that shifting reserves from short-term US Treasury assets into commercial bank deposits could weaken stablecoin resilience during financial stress. 

He said MiCA “poses a systemic risk to European banking stability” and explained that Tether preferred protecting existing users.

Trading activity remained resilient despite exchange delistings

Following MiCA implementation, Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and OKX removed USDT trading pairs for European users to comply with the regulation. 

However, research published in July 2026 by Nicola Borri of LUISS and Kirill Shakhnov of the University of Surrey found that overall stablecoin market shares changed very little. 

European USDC trading gained roughly six percentage points mainly because USDT trading volumes declined by around 20% after delistings rather than because of stronger demand.

DefiLlama data showed MiCA-compliant euro stablecoins approached $900 million in value during mid-2026. ESMA has approved 19 e-money token issuers across 11 member states, while policy analyst Patrick Hansen estimated about 35 regulated e-money tokens from 21 companies by late July. 

A consortium including BBVA, ING, and UniCredit also plans to introduce a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, although dollar-backed stablecoins continue leading global crypto trading, payments, and liquidity.

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According to the latest RWA.xyz data, tokenized stock holders reached 1,020,510 wallets, representing a 33% increase from 766,366 recorded just over a week earlier. Compared with the 58,999 holders reported one year ago, the total has climbed by 17.3 times, making tokenized equities the fastest-growing segment within the broader RWA market.

Tokenized stocks account for most RWA wallets

The latest figures show there are now 1,622,570 onchain RWA holders across all categories. Tokenized equities represent 62.8% of that total, a significant increase from 13.1% recorded during the same period last year. 

Commodities remain the second-largest category with 256,264 holders, although that total is only around one-quarter of the number recorded by tokenized stocks despite commodities posting annual growth of 130%.

Overall, the RWA holder base expanded from 449,297 wallets to more than 1.62 million over the past year. During that period, tokenized stocks contributed approximately 960,000 additional wallets, accounting for the majority of the sector’s total holder growth.

bStocks leads the latest expansion

Recent growth has shifted away from Robinhood’s tokenized stock products, which recorded only low single-digit holder increases after July 28 while the overall market continued expanding rapidly. 

The latest wave of new participants instead came from bStocks, Binance’s tokenized securities platform launched on June 11 and operated by BTech Holdings under an Abu Dhabi Global Market license.

Among individual assets, SpaceX on bStocks has become the largest tokenized stock onchain with approximately 107,788 holders. NVIDIA xStock follows with around 64,000 holders, while the NVIDIA Robinhood Token has roughly 33,000 holders. Even when the two NVIDIA products are combined, SpaceX on bStocks still maintains the larger holder base.

Platform values continue rising

Growth in wallet numbers was accompanied by higher platform values. Over the past 30 days, bStocks increased its total value by 93.25% to $559.2 million, overtaking xStocks, which stands at $540.8 million. The platform now holds a 24.18% market share across 67 assets.

Ondo remains the largest platform by value with $854.1 million and a 36.93% market share, although its value increased only 0.40% over the same period. Robinhood’s tokenized stock platform reached $27.1 million after rising 125.2% during the past month, representing 1.17% of the market across 94 assets. Combined value across the ten largest platforms totals roughly $2.3 billion, equal to an average position of about $2,250 per holder.

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The 31-page filing uses variations of the word “fail” about 50 times and frames the dispute as Apple lashing out over its problems. “Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees, and its failures to integrate AI into its products,” the motion says. The central claim in the lawsuit filed by OpenAI is that Apple created the mess. Apple told staff to use their personal iCloud accounts to route work, blurring the line between corporate and personal data and leaving departing employees with access they never asked for, says OpenAI.

OpenAI claims the case is a cover-up

According to the filing, two former employees were mentioned in the case. Chang Liu’s last day at Apple was January 22, 2026. Tang Tan is a design executive who OpenAI says spent more than 24 years at the company. On August 3, OpenAI published a blog titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” in which the AI company alleged that it had iMessages between Liu and his former Apple colleagues asking Liu to help them locate files and complete transfers after he had already left.

One message from an Apple employee reads, “I found a 64GB drive. Do you think that will work,” followed later by “Still copying.” Liu was contacted by Apple staff, not the other way around, says OpenAI. “Residual access” is how the company describes Liu’s ongoing access to Apple systems. Apple doesn’t always disable accounts when people leave. On Tan, OpenAI says it told its team bluntly that it won’t touch proprietary material from other companies. In addition, OpenAI’s blog post refutes Apple’s version of the events leading up to the lawsuit.

Apple said it reached out to OpenAI in February and got no response. OpenAI says Apple now admits its outside lawyers sent an email to the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names and only admitted the mistake after OpenAI called them out. Apple also said it had a discussion with general counsel for OpenAI. The company later acknowledged to OpenAI that it never happened. In earlier contact, Apple never raised the specific allegations in the suit, OpenAI said, and at one point said it was “resolving any issues” and then went quiet for five months before filing, the tech giant said.

On Monday, Apple filed for a preliminary injunction, a court order that would prevent OpenAI from using the disputed trade secrets while the case is ongoing. OpenAI describes the request as baseless and pointless. It says it has no interest in Apple’s secrets and does not possess any. Apple’s lawsuit alleges that more than 400 former employees now work at OpenAI and that the company used internal Apple code names to lure confidential details from job candidates.

Apple has reportedly lost researchers from its Foundation Models team to Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Cohere, including team lead Ruoming Pang, who left for a Meta package above $200 million, as Cryptopolitan has reported. In July, Elon Musk publicly championed Apple and exchanged insults with Sam Altman on X.

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Circle closed nearly flat that day, up 0.05% to $63.28, meaning the stake was worth around $17.3 million. According to disclosures, Ark Invest sits ninth in ARKK’s holdings with a 3.68% weight worth $223.4 million. Ark limits any one position to 10% of a fund, so it’s diversified across its ETFs, and there’s still room to add. In the second quarter, total revenue and reserve income for Circle reached $701 million, a 7% increase year-over-year. The figure was less than the $712 million to $718 million analysts had modeled. CRCL dropped about 3% in premarket trading before bouncing back.

Ark Invest makes huge Circle and SpaceX stock buys

According to reports, adjusted earnings were 18 cents a share, versus a consensus of 16 cents, and net income from continuing operations was $48 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up 8% to $143 million. Total USDC in circulation grew 19% to $73.3 billion, with onchain transaction volume increasing 151% to $14.8 trillion. Circle’s reserve income, which is the money it earns on the assets backing USDC, was $668 million, up 5% from a year ago.

However, the yield on those reserves fell 66 basis points. Circle is sitting on more reserves and making less from each dollar of them. Circle’s Arc blockchain is scheduled to launch on the public mainnet on September 16, with BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, and Mastercard listed among founding validators. Ark Invest bought 181,830 SpaceX shares in ARKK, the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ), ARKW, and the Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF (ARKX), amounting to a ~$20 million stake.

That order came as SpaceX dropped 13.6% to $108.27, below its $135 IPO price. Earnings coverage from Cryptopolitan said revenue had soared 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, along with a $541 million net loss. Investors were spooked by spending after capital expenditures rose to $18.4 billion, a sixfold increase in the quarter, mostly to build out AI infrastructure. SpaceX expects $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, or possibly 2029, ahead of an earlier 2031 target, Elon Musk told the call.

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The transaction adds more than 680 patent families and nearly 1,000 issued patents worldwide to Circle’s intellectual property portfolio, according to the company’s announcement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and neither company confirmed whether IBM retained any licensing rights related to the transferred patents.

The acquired portfolio extends beyond blockchain technology and includes patents covering banking, financial services, insurance, enterprise infrastructure, supply chain verification, and secure cloud operations. Circle said the intellectual property strengthens its long-term strategy as it continues expanding products built on blockchain infrastructure.

Sarah Wilson, Circle’s general counsel and corporate secretary, said IBM has been a pioneer in technological innovation. She added that intellectual property remains critical to advancing the company’s “mission and expanding adoption of on-chain infrastructure.”

Patents strengthen Circle products and enterprise services

Circle said the newly acquired patents will support several existing products, including USDC, the Circle Payments Network, and Arc, its enterprise blockchain platform. The company also stated that the portfolio will contribute to financial tools designed for AI agents, an area it has continued developing through its Agent Stack offerings.

Both companies also indicated they intend to explore additional commercial opportunities together following the transaction.

The acquisition changes the ranking among major blockchain patent holders in the United States. Patent analytics firm PatSnap reported in December 2025 that IBM held 790 blockchain patents, placing it alongside Advanced New Technologies and Bank of America. By acquiring most of IBM’s blockchain portfolio, Circle now moves ahead of those competitors.

Circle received its first blockchain-related patent in December 2023 for parallel blockchain data processing. The company also previously joined the LOT Network, an organization created to protect members from patent assertion entities.

Market response and regulatory momentum

The announcement generated modest gains in premarket trading. Circle shares rose 2.5%, while IBM shares increased 1.6%.

The market reaction follows a challenging period for Circle’s stock performance. Yahoo Finance reported that CRCL had declined 66% over the previous 12 months to $62.36, while IBM had fallen 18% to $214.19 as of July 27. Circle’s shares experienced significant volatility during 2025, climbing from about $81 to a peak near $293 before surrendering most of those gains.

The acquisition also follows recent regulatory progress for Circle. On July 10, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval for Circle National Trust to operate as a national trust bank providing digital asset custody services. Earlier in May, Circle raised $222 million through the sale of Arc tokens before the blockchain’s launch, resulting in a network valuation of $3 billion.

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Strategy increases cash reserve through share sale

Strategy Inc. disclosed in a Form 8-K filed on Monday that it increased its cash reserve by $525 million during the past week. The company sold 5.4 million MSTR shares, generating proceeds of $544.5 million. During the same period, it also repurchased 288,930 shares of its STRC preferred stock for $25 million.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed the update on X, stating that Strategy has now secured 2.1 years of coverage for dividend and interest payments. According to the filing, the company now holds a total USD Reserve of $3.75 billion.

Saylor had hinted at the announcement a day earlier by posting the company’s familiar tracking chart alongside the comment, “We’re gonna need another color.” Similar posts had previously been followed by announcements of Bitcoin purchases. However, Monday’s filing instead detailed an expansion of the company’s cash reserve.

The latest disclosure also confirmed that Strategy did not purchase any Bitcoin during the reporting period. That marked the fifth consecutive week without a Bitcoin acquisition.

Bitcoin holdings remain unchanged as criticism emerges

Strategy continues to hold 843,775 BTC, valued at approximately $54 billion. Based on the reported figures, the company’s Bitcoin position currently reflects paper losses exceeding $8 billion.

Long-time Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff criticized the company’s latest financing decision. In a post on X, Schiff argued that selling MSTR shares was the wrong approach and claimed Strategy should have sold Bitcoin instead of what he described as “discounted MSTR shares.”

He wrote, “So, another week when you chose to destroy common shareholder value by selling discounted MSTR shares (thereby reducing Bitcoin per share) to raise cash and buy back STRC rather than sell Bitcoin.”

Schiff further argued that repeated sales of common shares reduce the justification for investors to own MSTR.

MSTR rises ahead of quarterly earnings report

MSTR traded at $97.46, representing a daily gain of 6.44% following the announcement. The share price advanced as investors assessed the company’s strengthened cash position and capital management activities.

MSTR price chart. Source: Yahoo Finance.

Strategy is scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings on Thursday, July 30. The company’s earnings are expected to increase by 6.40% to $121.88 million.

The consensus price target for MSTR stands at approximately $360, representing an implied upside potential of more than 290% based on current trading levels.

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Boltz says the problem is how quickly attackers can operate now. Boltz said in posts on X that swaps are off “until further notice,” with no timeline for any possible return. “To be clear: this is not a response to a single incident,” the Bitcoin bridge builder said. Over the past few months, it had seen a steady increase in automated, AI-assisted probing of its systems and had dealt with several exploits, each of which was contained. “Attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch,” Boltz said. The recent security scans left the company unable to responsibly turn swaps back on while “being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.”

Boltz blames major shift in Bitcoin operating services for move

The company described the change as “a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack.” It told users, “Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.” Boltz confirmed that no one lost funds, as it never takes control of customer coins. The swaps are done via hashed timelock contracts, a mechanism that either completes a trade in full or reverses it within a single block.

Swaps move value between regular BTC, Lightning BTC, and Liquid Network BTC. “No user funds were ever at risk,” Boltz said. It continued, “Losses were ours alone.” Boltz has not revealed its transaction volumes, while DeFiLlama showed its total value locked at ~$262,000. The API is still running and operational, so users can process cooperative refunds, and unilateral refunds work anyway, as they don’t depend on Boltz infrastructure.

Bull Bitcoin told users that Lightning payments and Liquid-to-Bitcoin swaps in its wallet would now “fail without explanation” while it searches for a fix. Aqua Wallet issued a similar notice and said it was working with Boltz to find an alternative route for Lightning swaps. The shutdown is a warning to anyone building on an open stack with a small headcount. AI attackers are getting more sophisticated, and the cost of maintaining enterprise-grade security “will price out many innovative startups” working on services tied to client funds, even non-custodial ones, said Swan co-founder Yan Pritzker.

AI software has been connected to a seed-phrase exploit of Coldcard, a hardware wallet implicated in more than $100 million in stolen Bitcoin. Cryptopolitan also reported the same trend in DeFi, where GoPlus Security said more than $1.5 million was drained in four smart-contract attacks in 48 hours. A16z crypto found the success rate of an off-the-shelf AI agent exploiting known vulnerabilities jumped from 10% to 70% once it was fed structured attack knowledge.

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Sedric Louis, John Davis, and Martel Williams each face one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, a charge under the Hobbs Act that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan for the District of Connecticut announced the charges Tuesday. All three pleaded not guilty. The men were brought in by the people coordinating an earlier kidnapping and told to raid a Connecticut home, threaten the person inside, and make him move stolen Bitcoin into wallets that the coordinators controlled, investigators say.

Authorities charge three over attempt to steal Bitcoin

According to prosecutors, the group drove to the state over four days in late August 2024, rented vehicles, picked up air rifles and walkie-talkies, and then spent two days watching the target and his parents. The three left, worried the home’s security cameras had recorded them and unable to contact their co-conspirators. Then a different crew from Florida came out to try and pull off the robbery instead.

As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, a resident of Washington, D.C., was scammed out of 4,100 Bitcoin, worth about $245 million, via a social-engineering scam perpetrated by Veer Chetal and two others who posed as support personnel for Google and a crypto-exchange. Chetal’s family was caught in the crossfire of a fight between Chetal and an alleged associate of Adam Iza at a Miami nightclub in mid-2024. Six men from Florida rammed Sushil and Radhika Chetal’s Lamborghini SUV near Danbury High School on August 25, 2024, blocked it with a van, and dragged the couple out.

Sushil Chetal was beaten with a baseball bat. According to court records, both parents were bound with duct tape, Cryptopolitan reports. Police in Danbury, aided by an off-duty FBI agent who happened to be in the area, chased the van until it crashed and arrested all six. Several people connected with the case have entered guilty pleas. Adam Iza, a 25-year-old businessman from California known as “The Godfather,” pleaded guilty in June to the same Hobbs Act conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 12, reported Cryptopolitan.

The six Florida men involved in the kidnapping have also pleaded guilty, and two have already received sentences of 11 years. The three Missouri defendants were charged in a second superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in New Haven on May 22, 2026. Louis and Davis have been in custody since their arrests on June 25 and entered their pleas on July 30 in federal court in Bridgeport. Williams showed up on July 17 and was released on bond.

According to Cryptopolitan, blockchain security firm CertiK reported 34 verified “wrench attacks” in the first four months of the year, a term used to describe the use of physical force to gain access to Bitcoin, marking a 41% increase from the same period in 2025. Losses totaled about $101 million. CertiK predicts the number of attacks will hit ~130 by the end of the year.

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The analytics firm linked affected addresses to likely regions using on-chain records and exchange connections. It said Coldcard gained local adoption through influencer campaigns and Canada’s early Bitcoin culture.

The United States and Thailand also recorded significant losses during this week’s attacks. Estimates place the value of stolen Bitcoin between $110 million and $150 million.

Coldcard Exploit Prompts Wider Security Response

The incident has triggered a coordinated effort to identify similar weaknesses across Bitcoin software. A group called the Red Team is conducting AI-assisted audits of wallets, libraries, tools, and infrastructure.

Rob Hamilton, chief executive of AnchorWatch, is leading the initiative. The team has spent more than $20,000 on model tokens and secured further funding.

So far, the Red Team has scanned 150 code repositories and contacted relevant project teams. It has also approached OpenAI about using Cyber Harness for deeper vulnerability testing.

Researchers have used the free Kimi K3 model to examine cryptocurrency codebases. The audits highlight how cheaper models can support both defensive research and malicious discovery.

The Red Team says its reviews are finding about one serious or critical vulnerability each hour. Its testing systems have reached several Bitcoin projects within the past 12 hours.

Multiple Attackers Target Exposed Wallets

On-chain evidence indicates that the Coldcard theft involved several entities rather than one attacker. Alex Thorn, head of Firmwide Research, said the activity occurred in multiple waves.

The first wave caused the largest losses. Onchain Lens reported that attackers removed more than 1,816 BTC from 5,200 affected addresses.

Most stolen funds remain in destination wallets. This differs from many cryptocurrency attacks, where criminals move assets through mixers within hours.

One wallet holding about 64 stolen BTC appears to have started early mixing activity. It mixed 10 BTC and transferred the remaining 54 BTC elsewhere.

Law enforcement agencies have tagged most destination addresses. However, mixing services can make portions of the funds harder to trace and recover.

Owners Urged to Replace Wallet Seeds

Coldcard users have received advice to do more than install firmware updates. Security guidance recommends creating a new wallet seed and moving funds immediately.

Users have also been urged to apply higher transaction fees. In some cases, owners recovered funds by outbidding and front-running pending attacker transactions.

The exploit has affected broader Bitcoin sentiment and renewed concerns about self-custody risks. It also shows how quickly multiple attackers can exploit publicly known weaknesses.

The Red Team’s work aims to reduce similar incidents by auditing critical components before attackers locate flaws. Its current campaign covers software used throughout the Bitcoin ecosystem.

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