Julien Thomas, a principal engineer at Morpho, confirmed that the lending protocol was back online after initially reporting on the AWS CloudFront that caused the downtime in the first place. Julien wrote: “All Morpho services are back and stable. Performance may still be impacted, but the app & the api are functioning.” Amazon Web Services also reported the problem on its status page around the time Morpho experienced its downtime. The cloud service provider noted that between 12:45 AM and 4:18 AM PDT, CloudFront customers using VPC Origins experienced 5xx errors.

Morpho resumes activity after AWS CloudFront downtime

AWS engineers explained that the system that pushes routing configuration to AWS network processors stopped loading the updated data correctly once the fleet that handles connections to private VPC origins reached its internal capacity limit. CloudFront is Amazon’s content delivery network, the layer that routes web traffic to a site’s servers. VPC Origins, the feature at the center of the failure, is a newer option that lets customers serve applications from behind private load balancers without exposing back-end infrastructure to the open internet.

The company said the issue has now been resolved. As Amazon reported, the 5xx errors downtime affected CloudFront customers using VPC Origins. The AI platform Hugging Face, the UK’s National Lottery, and players of Bethesda’s Fallout 76 could also not get online, just as Morpho users. The tradesea trading platform said it had to ship a workaround to keep its web platform online, containing the downtime to its mobile app.

The downtime is the latest to have knocked down the services of a crypto platform. As recently as May, Coinbase went dark after “a room overheating in an AWS datacenter when multiple chillers failed.” The outage struck Morpho’s hosted interface, not its onchain contracts, and the distinction matters. Morpho is an onchain lending network that connects lenders and borrowers, and it reported more than $11 billion in deposits when it raised $175 million in June, in a round co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto, and Ribbit.

DeFiLlama currently lists Morpho’s total value locked at about $7.33 billion, spread mainly across Ethereum and Base. Neither Morpho nor AWS has published a full incident report tying specific user impact to the CloudFront failure. Julien noted that performance could stay degraded even after services returned, so users may want to watch for a formal post-mortem and confirm transactions settle as expected before assuming full recovery.

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The nonbinding resolution carries no legal weight, nor does it stop the president’s clemency power. However, it puts all 100 senators on record against clemency for Bankman-Fried. The effort was steered by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, and Sen. Rubén Gallego, an Arizona Democrat. The United States senators introduced the motion on June 17, days after Bankman-Fried formally petitioned for a pardon with the White House through the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney’s Office, Cryptopolitan reported.

United States senators barred from lobbying for SBF’s pardon

Sen. Lummis said SBF was trying to avoid the consequences of his conviction. “SBF has clearly ramped up his pardon campaign, and Senator Lummis wants Fried to know she and her colleagues think he’s right where he belongs,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Lummis’ office.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been lobbying for a presidential pardon over the past year, more especially after President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in November. On June 8, he formally filed a clemency application, despite the president’s having said earlier this year that he had “no intention of pardoning” the convicted FTX founder.

SBF was convicted in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy tied to the 2022 collapse of FTX, which wiped out $183 billion of value across the crypto market. He was sentenced to 25 years. Prosecutors described the scheme as one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history, with FTX customers losing more than $8 billion. Bankman-Fried will only be eligible for release in 2044.

The post United States Senate approves resolution to reject pardon for FTX’s Bankman-Fried first appeared on Coinfea.

Researchers from Stanford University and Singapore Management University reviewed about 16,000 five-minute Bitcoin contracts over two months and found patterns pointing to possible manipulation.

The study focused on contracts that resolve according to whether Bitcoin finishes above or below a set price. Researchers found that Binance spot order flow increased sharply before settlement, moving prices before they reversed soon afterward.

“In the final seconds before settlement, Binance spot order flow spikes, resulting in price movements that revert shortly after settlement,” the paper said. “Clearly, this is a transitory push to manipulate the spot price, not trading on information.”

Binance Prices Closely Track Oracle Results

Polymarket uses a Chainlink oracle to settle its five-minute Bitcoin markets. The oracle calculates an average Bitcoin price from spot exchanges. However, researchers described Binance as “an economically tight proxy” for that settlement price due to its trading volume.

According to the study, Binance’s midpoint price stayed extremely close to the oracle value. Researchers said a trader could push Binance’s midpoint several basis points beyond the contract strike and affect the final result.

The paper found that contracts settled on the same side as Binance’s price 85% of the time. Researchers therefore linked the observed order flow to efforts aimed at influencing contract outcomes rather than responding to new market information.

Structural Risk May Extend Beyond Polymarket

The researchers said the issue may not be limited to Polymarket. Other platforms offering contracts with similar settlement structures could face the same weakness when outcomes depend on an underlying market that participants can trade.

“These contracts have a structural vulnerability,” one paper author said. “They settle on a price that traders can move by trading the underlying asset itself.”

The findings center on how short-duration markets determine outcomes, particularly when settlement depends on a price measured at a narrow moment. The study traced the activity to Binance spot trading before contract expiration.

Polymarket Reviews Longer Settlement Windows

A Polymarket spokesperson said the company is looking to move some markets toward settlement methods using prices measured over longer periods instead of a single point in time during the coming year.

The platform has faced earlier questions about market integrity. A Columbia University study reported last year that 25% of Polymarket trading activity during the previous three years was artificial and arranged through wash trading.

In March 2026, Polymarket strengthened market integrity rules covering its CFTC-regulated United States exchange and decentralized finance platform. Those rules address market design standards, resolution criteria, and data sourcing requirements across the company’s trading operations.

The post Polymarket Bitcoin Bets Face Manipulation Concerns in New Study first appeared on Coinfea.

The company, trading as Paymonade, cleared the July 1 deadline that left only 280 crypto asset service providers fully authorized across the region.

The approval allows Paymonade to offer regulated crypto asset services across all 30 nations in the Euro Area. European authorities have adopted a unified framework, with no announced plan to return crypto trading oversight to separate national regulators.

“The era of lightly regulated crypto is ending,” said Calvin Cheng, founder and chairman of Paymonade.

“Getting this licence over the finish line, at a time when the vast majority of firms in our industry have not, shows the strength of the institution we’ve built. We expect the next generation of leaders in digital assets to be firms that pair innovation with regulatory trust, and we intend to be one of them.”

MiCAR Approval Supports European Operations

Paymonade provides fiat ramp services for crypto traders and settles fiat transactions for crypto service providers, fintech companies, and exchanges. These clients use its infrastructure to convert funds into euros or other fiat currencies.

The company recorded an annualized transaction volume of $1.8 billion based on its performance during the first half of 2026. According to the supplied information, that level places Paymonade among the European Union’s most liquid fiat infrastructure providers.

Only 280 Firms Retain Full Authorization

Only one in 10 firms secured full authorization by the July 1 deadline. More than 3,000 crypto companies had previously operated in Europe under registrations and restrictions imposed by local financial authorities.

Firms without full approval must leave the market, restructure their operations, or continue operating in breach of the law. Some companies are still seeking authorization. Even Binance did not clear the MiCAR requirements before the deadline.

Paymonade said its authorization protects its European position and reduces the risk of an abrupt closure that could disrupt clients moving funds. The company now enters the regulated market while several large competitors remain without full approval.

Insurance Policy Meets MiCAR Capital Rules

Damoon Technology met MiCAR’s Article 67 regulatory capital requirements through an insurance policy provided by a third party. The policy is published transparently on the company’s website.

The insurance remains valid for at least one year and includes a 90-day cancellation notice period. Paymonade chief executive Milos Winter Bogdanovic is responsible for updating the policy and keeping it publicly available.

Paymonade plans to double its European workforce during the next 12 months as it adds institutional clients. The company also expects rapid turnover growth in 2027 and projects annualized volume above $7.4 million within the coming year.

The post Paymonade MiCAR License Secures Access Across 30 European Markets first appeared on Coinfea.

The ECB selected 36 payment service providers (PSPs) to take part in the digital euro pilot in order to check the technical functionality of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). In a press release on Tuesday, shared on social media, the eurozone’s monetary policy regulator emphasized that the “exercise is crucial” for testing operations and refining user experience. The pilot is expected to begin in the second half of 2027 and continue for 12 months.

It will support preparations for the potential launch of a digital version of the single currency. The European CBDC has been in the making for several years now. It comes to reduce dependence on U.S. payment systems and curb the spread of dollar-pegged stablecoins, among other stated goals. The project cleared a key hurdle last month, as reported by Cryptopolitan, when it got the approval of the European Parliament’s important Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON).

ECB kickstarts move to check functionality of its CBDC

The ECB revealed it received more than 50 applications after issuing a call for interested parties in March of this year and evaluated them against multiple criteria. It insisted the approved participants, from across the euro area, will ensure representative testing. The list includes both banks and non-bank service providers, of various sizes and business models. Among them are giants such as Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Italy’s UniCredit.

In addition to those, there are also smaller banks from other countries, as well as Revolut, the popular neobank which operates in the region from Lithuania. Quoted in the official announcement, one of the ECB’s top executives, Piero Cipollone, noted: “The strong market interest in the pilot shows the private sector’s readiness to engage actively and quickly advance with the digital euro project to strengthen the European payments landscape.”

He added that the Frankfurt-headquartered authority hopes for even deeper engagement that will help develop a “secure, efficient and inclusive digital euro” in collaboration with payment companies. Cipollone is a prominent member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board and chairs the High-Level Task Force on the digital euro. Besides the ECB, the pilot will be hosted by 19 of the 21 national central banks in the area, as the participants may provide services in jurisdictions other than the one in which they are based.

The island nation of Malta, as well as Bulgaria, which only recently adopted the euro, are the only two eurozone countries that will not be represented in the upcoming trials. A beta version of the digital euro will be used in the testing. It will function like the original and use the same technology but will not have the status of a legal tender. Eurosystem employees will be given access to a range of digital euro services, again in beta mode, including the options to set up their own accounts and spend or receive CBDC.

The pilot will also involve staff from participating national central banks as well as e-commerce platforms and merchants offering everyday services, such as cafeterias and restaurants. Those who act as regular users will be able to make P2P (person-to-person) and P2B (person-to-business) payments through the tested digital euro system. Transfers between individuals can be initiated either online or offline, while payments to retailers will be accepted at a physical point of sale or through mobile devices.

The post ECB selects 36 banks and firms to pilot digital euro first appeared on Coinfea.

Elon Musk is promising a level of scrutiny no major social platform has offered in order to provide answers for individuals who have questioned how X ranks posts and moderates content. Elon Musk, in a post on X, said he will release the full codebase of the platform “with no exceptions” after the review for security vulnerabilities is completed. He added that “third party reviewers” would be invited “to confirm that the open source code is what is running on X’s live servers.

Elon Musk to open source X codebase after security checks

Before this announcement, in May 2026, X’s “For You” recommendation algorithm, which exposed the Grok-based ranking system along with the Thunder and Phoenix Retrieval components that pull candidate posts, was released on GitHub. It attracted thousands of developers, reaching 20,000 stars within a day, but it included only a small “mini” AI model, not the full production version, and withheld training data and advertising strategy.

Musk has previously described X’s algorithm as a “black box” that needs “massive improvements.” Musk has so far not provided a specific date for when the security review would finish or when the code would be released. The company reportedly plans to publish algorithm changes on GitHub every four weeks. Earlier, in a February 9 post, he announced that X would run “rigorous security tests” of X Chat and then open source all of that code. This also does not have a fixed date for completion.

xAI, the AI company whose Grok model underpins X’s newer ranking work, has also run its own open-source track. Cryptopolitan reported in August 2025 that xAI released the Grok 2.5 model on Hugging Face, a 500GB download that needs at least eight GPUs to run. Releasing the full codebase puts every vulnerability, design choice, and shortcut out in the open for anyone to see, and this comes with significant risk.

The post Elon Musk reveals conditions to open-source entire X codebase first appeared on Coinfea.

For those who haven’t been following, ORO is an AI-powered execution layer that has spent the past few months trying to make DeFi feel less like a technical obstacle course and more like a day to day app, allowing users to simply type what they want in plain language with the platform handling the rest (be it routing, doing the gas math or performing txn execution behind the scenes).

The Avalanche campaign, which went live earlier this month on the 8th, applies that same philosophy to learning, i.e. instead of wading through troves and troves of documentation, participants work through interactive lessons on the Avalanche (AVAX) ecosystem directly inside the ORO app. Subsequently, they can then put that knowledge into practice with the AI guiding each step.

The rewards structure is refreshingly simple as well such that completing the campaign drops 5,000 ORE Points into a user’s account instantly, along with a badge. Sharing that badge on X earns another 1,000 while everyone who finishes before the July 22 deadline splits the wider 500,000-point pool.

There is, however, a bigger reason the deadline matters because as per team, this may be one of the last opportunities to accumulate ORE Points before the ORO token generation event (TGE), which puts a fairly hard expiry date on what has so far been an open window.

The Ecosystem Is Busy

The aforementioned campaign seems to have come at a time when ORO has been on a partnership tear.  Firstly, the company teamed up with Spectre AI in an effort to bring market intelligence and trade execution into a single experience. Circle’s CCTP and Wormhole were also integrated subsequently, meaning USDC can now move across chains natively, with no wrapped tokens or synthetic assets involved. 

The ORO Widget also went live inside Nawa Finance and Oroswap, letting users ask questions and execute actions without ever leaving those apps. On the education front, a partnership with Edu3Labs extended ORO’s reach to a community of more than 5 million users (all while co-founder Katerina represented the project at Raise Summit in Paris).

From the outside looking in, community observers commented that the recent slew of alliances (all of whom occurred within a span of ten days) bore the hallmark of a project building with unusual consistency.

A Closing Window Worth Watching

What makes the Avalanche campaign notable is how neatly it has captured ORO’s broader pitch, i.e. the barrier to DeFi has never really been access but knowing where to start. A guided, conversational introduction to one of the industry’s most active ecosystems, paid for in points that convert into rewards at token launch, is a fairly compelling answer to that problem. 

The post ORO Puts Avalanche in the Spotlight as Its Fluency Campaign Enters the Final Days first appeared on Coinfea.

The CXMT perpetual futures contract launched through TradeXYZ after the issuer secured the ticker during an auction for 500 HYPE. Trading began immediately on HIP-3, where strong demand pushed the contract above prices used in the company’s earlier share distribution.

ChangXin Memory Technologies plans to raise as much as $10 billion through its initial public offering. The deal could become one of Shanghai’s largest public offerings since 2011. The company expects its shares to begin official trading on July 24.

Founded in 2016, CXMT forms part of China’s effort to expand domestic semiconductor production. The company supplies DRAM memory chips, placing it within the broader hardware industry supporting artificial intelligence development and rising computing demand.

TradeXYZ Launches CXMT Perpetual Contract

TradeXYZ announced the CXMT market on Wednesday, extending its range of contracts linked to real-world assets. The platform has previously introduced actively followed pre-IPO markets, including a SpaceX contract listed under the SPCX ticker.

Blockchain data showed TradeXYZ paid 500 HYPE to acquire the CXMT ticker and become the main issuer for the market. The addition arrived as TradeXYZ open interest reached new records, while the platform generated more than $60 million in annualized fees.

The contract joined a smaller group of stock-linked assets on Hyperliquid. Although these markets trail Hyperliquid’s largest crypto contracts, CXMT attracted substantial activity from crypto-native participants and traders in China throughout the contract’s contested opening pre-IPO trading period.

HIP-3 Trading Pushes Valuation Higher

CXMT had previously distributed some shares at $1.48 through a lottery-style process. On HIP-3, the perpetual contract traded above $8 after an early surge in activity, producing a much higher implied company valuation.

By July 15, CXMT recorded more than $23 million in open interest and $32 million in trading volume. The contract gained 33% during its initial pre-IPO trading period.

The largest whale position reached $4.12 million and carried an unrealized loss of $320,000 as prices increased. The short position remained open despite the rapid advance and related market pressure.

CXMT started trading with rapidly growing activity on HIP-3, entering price discovery above the expected valuation of ChangXin memory. | Source: HIP-3

CXMT Valuation Reaches $540 Billion

CXMT has approximately 66.88 billion issued shares. Applying the HIP-3 contract price across that share count placed its implied valuation near $500 billion during early trading.

The valuation peaked at about $540 billion when the contract reached a record $8.64. At that level, CXMT would rank as the world’s thirty-second largest company by market value.

Further subscription rounds are expected before official trading begins. Once the Shanghai listing starts, oracle pricing will determine the CXMT contract using the publicly traded share price and the renminbi to United States dollar exchange rate.

The post Hyperliquid Prices China AI Chip Giant CXMT at $540 Billion Before IPO first appeared on Coinfea.

Alaska’s Department of Law alerted victims after Bitcoin Depot Operating LLC sought bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas.

The company operated cash-to-crypto kiosks across Alaska and nationwide. Alaska’s Consumer Protection Unit urged residents to review eligibility and submit claims before the deadline.

More than 3,200 Alaskans reported about $40 million in fraud losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year, according to Wasilla State Senator Cathy Tilton. Seniors represented a large share.

How Crypto Kiosk Scams Targeted Victims

Bitcoin Depot’s machines resembled bank ATMs, but they converted cash into cryptocurrency and sent it to a wallet address entered during the transaction. Scammers exploited that process by directing victims to wallets they controlled.

According to the Department of Law, fraudsters often posed as police officers, government agencies, or major businesses. They pressured victims to deposit cash into kiosks and transfer cryptocurrency, leaving little chance of reversing payment.

Cori Mills, Alaska’s acting attorney general, called the technology a double-edged sword. “Cryptocurrency is an emerging financial tool that opens up possibilities for Alaskan consumers, but as with all advancements, there are perils too,” Mills said. She also described the kiosks as machines “used to take advantage of vulnerable Alaskans.”

The department warned that legitimate government agencies do not demand payment through cryptocurrency kiosks. Residents should verify any payment request before sending money.

Alaska Lawmakers Seek Stronger Kiosk Rules

Tilton is sponsoring SB 249, which would require licensing, identity verification, and safeguards for crypto-kiosk operators in Alaska. She linked the bankruptcy notice to her push for stricter oversight.

Regulators and courts elsewhere have acted against crypto ATMs amid rising fraud. Indiana, Tennessee, and Minnesota have banned the machines.

On July 7, a federal judge allowed Tennessee to keep enforcing its ban while CoinFlip challenges the law. FBI complaint data showed nationwide crypto-ATM scam losses reached $247 million in 2024, with older adults among the most common victims.

Bankruptcy Filing Offers Recovery Path

Bitcoin Depot operated more than 9,000 kiosks across North America before filing for Chapter 11 in May. Its first-quarter 2026 revenue fell nearly 50% year over year.

Massachusetts’s attorney general sued the company in February. In Texas, local sheriffs seized company kiosks, while victims lost about $56.8 million to crypto-kiosk fraud last year, the highest total.

Eligible Alaskans may follow the case through the court-appointed restructuring administrator’s claims website. The Department of Law advised residents to type the address into a browser if they distrust email links.

Filing is optional. Victims should not share personal or financial information with anyone offering assistance unless they independently verify that person’s identity.

The post Bitcoin Depot Bankruptcy Gives Alaska Victims July 21 Claim Deadline first appeared on Coinfea.

CleanSpark shares rose about 15% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after the company announced that it signed a 20-year lease deal with an unnamed global technology company at its Sandersville, Georgia data center campus worth up to $11.6 billion. The lease is a triple-net (NNN) agreement, meaning the tenant covers taxes, insurance, and maintenance on top of the rent. It even includes annual rent increases. The company expects the deal to generate approximately $330 million in average annual net operating income over the 20-year term.

Data center deal pushes CleanSpark pre-market shares above 15%

The tenant also signed a letter of intent and exclusivity agreement covering CleanSpark’s entire Texas portfolio, which includes 718 acres with up to 885 megawatts (MW) of power capacity across its Sealy and Brazoria campuses. The Georgia lease covers 175 MW of critical IT load, with deliveries expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2027. Before this announcement, CleanSpark reported a net loss of $378.3 million for its fiscal second quarter that ended March 31, 2026, with revenue falling to $136.4 million.

A $224.1 million markdown on its Bitcoin holdings was responsible for most of the loss. Cryptopolitan reported how the company carried a high short interest as of April, with about 34.89% of its free float being shorted. CleanSpark only describes the tenant as a “high-investment-grade global technology company.” The tenant’s creditworthiness is critical for a 20-year lease, so the lack of disclosure has become a point of concern for investors.

The deal concentrates risk in one customer, so if the tenant faces financial trouble or changes its plans, CleanSpark could be left with a large, empty data center. The Georgia lease is a major step in furthering CleanSpark’s digital infrastructure ambitions. The company is attempting to expand from being a pure-play Bitcoin miner. CEO Matt Schultz called the deal a “transformational moment.” The stable, long-term revenue stream is a significant change for the company from the volatile income from Bitcoin mining.

The deal also validates CleanSpark’s strategy of buying land with access to cheap, reliable power. The company plans to build out its sites and lease them to large tech companies that need vast amounts of electricity for AI and cloud computing. This is the same strategy being used by other miners like Core Scientific, IREN, and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT). However, the transition requires significant upfront capital.

CleanSpark estimates its costs will be $10 million to $12 million per MW of critical IT load. For the 175 MW Georgia site, that implies development costs of $1.75 billion to $2.1 billion. The company has not said how it will finance this build-out. The first major milestone for this deal will be successfully delivering the site in Q4 2027. And while the Texas exclusivity is promising, it is important to note that a letter of intent is not a binding agreement.

The post CleanSpark pre-market shares rise above 15% amid data center deal first appeared on Coinfea.