Crypto’s sundown brought a mix of hard lessons, quiet building, and a few big swings at regulation.
The starkest story of the day: Radiant Capital (RDNT) is closing its doors. After an October 2024 exploit that drained more than $50 million, the team spent 18 months trying to recover the funds or raise fresh capital. Nothing worked. Now the DAO is entering an orderly wind-down. In a space where projects often “pivot” or quietly fade, Radiant is doing something rarer: formally accepting that the hole is too deep to climb out of.
It wasn’t the only reminder of how brutal crypto security can be. The Kelp DAO exploiter, tied by researchers to North Korea’s TraderTraitor operation, has now laundered roughly $220 million of the $293 million stolen, mostly through Wasabi and Tornado Cash. Around $71 million remains frozen on Arbitrum, and a mere $1.7 million is still traceable in the original wallets. For anyone hoping for meaningful recovery, those numbers are effectively a full stop.
While on-chain crime dominated the headlines, policy makers in Washington are lining up their own inflection point. The U.S. Senate is preparing to vote on the CLARITY Act, a sweeping crypto bill some are calling a Dodd‑Frank moment for digital assets. The proposal would define who regulates what between the SEC and CFTC, put guardrails around central bank digital currencies, give a clearer home to stablecoins, and tighten ethics rules around lawmakers holding or trading tokens. Coinbase has been lobbying hard in favor. Whatever passes or fails here could set the tone for U.S. crypto regulation for the rest of the decade.
Not all the action was in D.C. though. Robinhood closed its $180 million acquisition of WonderFi, picking up about 300,000 Canadian crypto customers and control of Bitbuy and Coinsquare. The pitch: pull those users into Robinhood’s lower‑fee, streamlined trading app and extend its global crypto reach beyond 1 million funded accounts. The market, however, wasn’t exactly celebrating; Robinhood’s stock slipped nearly 4% on the news, a sign investors may be cautious about further expansion in a choppy crypto cycle.
If Robinhood is angling for retail, Ripple is going after the global payments rails. Its RLUSD stablecoin (RLUSD), launched less than a year ago, is already around a $1.7–1.8 billion market cap and is now expanding into Turkey in partnership with local players. That puts RLUSD squarely in the ring with USDT (USDT) and USDC (USDC), especially in Turkey’s highly active $200 billion crypto market. Ripple wants RLUSD to be the “enterprise-grade” option running alongside its broader ecosystem (XRP), at a time when stablecoins are looking more and more like the backbone of on-chain finance.
MoneyGram is jumping into the same race from the opposite direction. The remittance giant launched MGUSD on Stellar, using Stripe’s Bridge rails. The idea: turn MoneyGram’s global network into a gateway for digital dollars, especially for the underbanked. MGUSD sits at the intersection of old-school money transfer and on-chain settlement, giving users a stablecoin native to an existing payments franchise instead of a crypto‑first startup.
On the trading side, regulated derivatives are slowly catching up with the wild west. Kalshi, a CFTC‑regulated prediction market, has filed to list perpetual futures on 12 altcoins, including XRP (XRP), SOL, DOGE, SHIB, XLM, HBAR, and ETH. If approved, it would mark one of the most significant expansions of regulated U.S. crypto derivatives beyond Bitcoin, bringing a market‑structure layer that until now has largely lived offshore.
Market structure was front and center on Polymarket, too, but for all the wrong reasons. The platform is taking heat after resolving a $79 million market as “No,” even though Strategy Inc (ex‑MicroStrategy) disclosed in a June 1 filing that it sold 32 BTC (BTC) between May 26 and May 31. Traders argue the sale happened within the deadline and that the disclosure timing shouldn’t override the underlying event. The dispute goes beyond one market: it’s about whether on‑chain prediction platforms can be trusted to apply rules consistently when large sums are at stake.
Bitcoin itself is stuck in a curious limbo. Volatility is sitting at multi‑year lows. A growing share of coins is held at a loss. And BTC has broken below the $75,000 level, amplifying selling pressure and feeding the narrative that we may be nearing a cycle bottom. At the same time, Bitcoin’s price action is decoupling from traditional equities, suggesting crypto may be trading on its own macro—tightening supply dynamics and shifting expectations about future flows—rather than simply following the stock market.
Flows paint a muddier picture. Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have seen a record streak of outflows, nine straight days of redemptions that make for eye-catching headlines. But analysts like Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas argue that the core holdings remain remarkably sticky and that the huge inflows from earlier in the year still dwarf the recent bleed. The message: institutional interest hasn’t vanished; the tourists are just rotating out.
Even as MicroStrategy’s successor Strategy trimmed a small 32 BTC position, others are stepping in. Strive (ASST) boosted its stack by 2,500 BTC and now holds over 19,000 BTC, putting it in the top tier of public Bitcoin holders. The firm is looking to expand its BTC buying capacity by another $4.2 billion via new ATM programs, and Benchmark just started coverage with a Buy rating and a $32 target. In other words, some institutions are using the current jitters as a chance to load up.
Not everyone is convinced Bitcoin is the only story to watch. Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick is leaning into the idea that Ethereum (ETH) could outperform BTC by about 40%. The thesis: staking yields, relatively lower sell pressure, and the chance that Bitcoin treasuries might be forced to liquidate to cover obligations. A tiny sale from Strategy has been enough to spook markets, suggesting sentiment is fragile—and that rotation into ETH could accelerate if the fear persists.
Behind the scenes, big names are quietly knitting together the next layer of infrastructure. Franklin Templeton and MoonPay announced a partnership that connects Franklin’s Benji tokenized funds with MoonPay’s institutional platform. Eligible institutions will be able to swap stablecoins directly into tokenized money market funds on-chain. It’s a bet that tokenization plus yield plus regulatory comfort is what finally brings more conservative players into digital assets.
Coinbase is busy on two fronts. On the DeFi side, Coinbase Ventures bought ENA (ENA) on the open market and inked a partnership with Ethena to bring USDe and on-chain savings to more than 100 million Coinbase users, with integration slated for next week. On the more traditional side, Coinbase invested in ProShares’ GENIUS Money Market ETF (IQMM), a $22 billion fund of short‑term Treasuries and cash equivalents designed to be compliant with GENIUS Act reserve rules. That move signals where Coinbase thinks stablecoin reserves are going: fully backed, fully regulated, and tightly integrated with traditional money markets.
Of course, not everyone in Washington wants crypto more tightly integrated into the mainstream. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Representative Bobby Scott are pressing the Department of Labor to scrap a proposal that would allow crypto and other “risky” assets in 401(k) plans. They argue it puts trillions in retirement savings at risk and could personally benefit Donald Trump. It’s a reminder that even as part of the government tries to build a regulatory framework, another part is still trying to keep crypto at arm’s length from everyday savers.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury is widening its net abroad, sanctioning Iran’s largest crypto exchange Nobitex along with related platforms and individuals. The accusation: helping the Iranian government and sanctioned entities move funds and skirt Western restrictions using digital assets. It’s another datapoint in a broader trend—crypto is firmly in the crosshairs of foreign policy and sanctions enforcement.
And amid all the noise, the industry is taking a moment to recognize itself. The BeInCrypto Institutional 100 Awards 2026 has entered its final phase, with shortlists set across categories like Access to Digital Assets, Retail to Crypto Bridge, Regulation & Governance, Enterprise Blockchain, and Tokenization & On‑Chain Finance. For an industry that oscillates between blowups and breakthroughs, it’s a snapshot of who’s still building—and who might define the next cycle once today’s chaos settles down.
