Circle has unveiled its new blockchain, Arc, designed to use stablecoins for international payments and settlements. According to the company, a public testnet will launch this fall, allowing the platform’s features to be trialed without any risk to the main network.
Arc will be Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible, with transaction fees and confirmations handled in USDC.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called the launch of Arc an important step toward building a global infrastructure for digital dollars.
In Q2 2025, the amount of USDC in circulation rose 90% year-over-year, reaching $61.3 billion. Combined revenue and earnings from stablecoin reserves increased 53% to $658 million, according to the company’s report.
Earlier, Circle submitted an application to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) seeking a national trust bank charter.
The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection has surpassed the well-known Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in market capitalization, climbing to second place overall. This surge was largely driven by a 385% increase in the price of the PENGU token over the past five weeks.
According to data from DappRadar, Pudgy Penguins' market cap has reached $360 million, while Bored Ape Yacht Club’s sits at $333 million.
TradingView data shows that PENGU’s rally began in the last week of June, when the token bounced off a support level at $0.007737. Since then, it has posted five consecutive bullish weekly candles — the longest sustained uptrend since the token’s launch.
Launched in December 2024, PENGU serves as a utility token within the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem. It acts as the core cryptocurrency for the community, enabling governance and participation in decision-making.
The recent price surge of PENGU points to at least a temporary revival of interest in the NFT sector within the broader crypto space.
Nevertheless, CryptoPunks remains the leading NFT collection, boasting a market cap of $612 million. Its 24-hour trading volume has jumped by 4600%, and the average price per CryptoPunk NFT stands at $181,480, far higher than Pudgy Penguins’ average of $57.52.
Representatives of the U.S. Democratic Party, led by Maxine Waters and Stephen Lynch, have declared next week as "Anti-Crypto Corruption Week" in an effort to block the GENIUS, CLARITY, and anti-CBDC crypto bills.
They voiced concern that these bills could pave the way for what they call Donald Trump’s crypto corruption. According to Waters, the proposals lack essential consumer protections and national security safeguards.
This initiative is a direct response to “Crypto Week”, which was promoted by House Republicans.
“The Republican push to pass these bills would further jeopardize our financial stability, national security, and consumer protections,” said Waters.
She argued that the legislation would effectively make Congress complicit in what she described as Trump’s unprecedented crypto grift. Waters alleged that Trump’s true motive is personal enrichment — benefitting himself, his family, and the billionaire allies in his circle. She claimed Trump has already earned $1.2 billion through digital assets.
“My Republican colleagues continue to do the bidding of the crypto industry while ignoring the vulnerabilities and abuses that exist in the crypto space,” Waters stated. “Our message is clear: we will not allow the financial system to become a tool for deception, lawlessness, and abuse of power. The stakes for consumers, investors, and our democracy have never been higher.”
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, along with researcher Toni Wahrstätter, has proposed an enhancement to EIP-7983 that introduces a new gas limit for individual transactions on the Ethereum network.
The proposal suggests setting a per-transaction gas limit of 16,777,216 units (2²⁴). Currently, Ethereum enforces a gas limit on each block—around 36 million—but does not impose a cap on individual transactions.
According to the authors, implementing this transaction-level gas cap would:
Improve the network’s resilience to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks,
Enhance overall stability,
Ensure more predictable transaction processing costs.
The chosen limit of 2²⁴ gas units strikes a balance: it’s high enough to support complex operations such as smart contract deployment and advanced DeFi interactions, while still maintaining predictable performance and reducing risk.
Without a transaction gas limit, the network could face several issues:
Inefficient load distribution,
Vulnerability to quadratic resource attacks,
Compatibility problems with technologies like zkVM and parallel execution.
EIP-7983 proposes that the 16.77 million gas cap be enforced universally, regardless of the block gas limit set by miners or validators. Under this proposal, any transaction exceeding the cap would be rejected by the network.
.S. authorities have uncovered a fraudulent scheme in which a scammer impersonated a member of former President Donald Trump's inaugural committee and Vice President J.D. Vance, stealing $250,300 in cryptocurrency. The stolen funds were laundered through various wallets, but the FBI was able to trace and recover $40,300. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is now seeking to return the recovered amount to the victim.
🔹 DOJ Press Release According to the DOJ, on December 24, 2024, several victims received an email from an individual posing as Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. The scammer used a fake email address that differed from the official one by only a single character.
Operating from Nigeria, the impersonator urged recipients to transfer funds to an Ethereum wallet. One victim sent 250,300 USDT (a stablecoin issued by Tether). Within two hours, the scammer moved the funds across multiple cryptocurrency addresses.
Through blockchain analysis, the FBI identified and recovered $40,300 USDT, which is now subject to forfeiture through a civil action.
📊 Context According to an April report from IC3, losses from crypto-related fraud surged by 66% in 2024, reaching $9.3 billion.
Earlier in June, the DOJ also sought to seize $7.74 million from North Korean blockchain developers who allegedly bypassed sanctions by obtaining work in the U.S., funneling the earnings into the country’s weapons programs.
Recently, law enforcement in Texas used power tools to open a Bitcoin ATM and seize $31,900 in cash that had been fraudulently extorted from a victim.
Reactions within the crypto community were mixed: some were pleased that the defrauded individual got their money back, while others reasonably pointed out that the scammer remained unpunished and the loss was ultimately borne by the ATM owner.
To prevent such incidents, one city in the state of Washington has completely banned cryptocurrency ATMs. Other states are proposing legislation aimed at making life harder for scammers without inconveniencing experienced investors.
Vermont, however, adopted a more balanced solution by imposing a $1,000 limit on Bitcoin ATM transactions. This measure helps protect people from losing their life savings while preserving access to crypto services.
Official data shows that losses from Bitcoin ATM fraud were $12 million in 2020 and surged to $114 million by 2023. In the first half of 2024 alone, losses had already reached $66 million — a worrying trend.
Older adults, especially those over 60, are the most frequent victims of such scams, which is why the average loss per case hovers around $10,000.
Hackers allegedly linked to the North Korean government have stolen around $2 billion from centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) over the past year. Despite efforts by legitimate market participants—such as freezing stolen assets—these hackers managed to launder more than $1.5 billion.
Researcher Taylor Monahan attributes a significant portion of these funds, approximately $1.8 billion, to a series of major CEX breaches, including those targeting Bybit, DMM Bitcoin, WazirX, Phemex, and BingX.
An anonymous analyst known as ZachXBT described this wave of coordinated thefts as part of a broader “supercycle of crime” within the digital asset industry:
“While the sector has historically been vulnerable to abuse, the scale of criminal activity has clearly increased—particularly following the launch of meme tokens by politicians and the dismissal of several legal cases against crypto firms, which has further enabled this behavior.”
Former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has regained his title as the richest Chinese individual on Forbes’ billionaire list.
According to the publication’s official website, Zhao’s net worth has reached $65.7 billion. Although he has strong ties to China, Forbes lists his citizenship as Canadian. Globally, he currently ranks 24th among the world’s wealthiest people.
Zhao’s fortune is known to fluctuate significantly due to its strong connection to the cryptocurrency market. His net worth peaked in 2022, then experienced a sharp decline in 2023. However, in 2024, the situation began to improve, and the upward trend continued into 2025, bringing his wealth close to its previous high. This reflects the recent volatility of the crypto industry.
The majority of Zhao’s portfolio is made up of Binance Coin (BNB), which reportedly constitutes about 98.48% of his holdings. Other assets include approximately 1.32% in Bitcoin, 0.17% in Eurite (EURI), and 0.03% in Tether (USDT). These figures are approximate, as the exact composition of his assets has not been disclosed. Nevertheless, it is clear that the former Binance CEO’s wealth is heavily dependent on the value of BNB.
CETUS, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Sui and Aptos blockchains, has resumed operations a month after suffering a major hack.
The team managed to recover $162 million of the stolen funds and secured a $30 million loan from the Sui Foundation to support its recovery.
In addition to restoring regular platform functionality, CETUS launched a compensation program to reimburse affected users. One user reported receiving 86% of their lost SUI tokens, while another noted a 27% shortfall in a liquidity pool that was supposedly unaffected.
Part of the stolen assets was recovered after Sui network validators froze the hacker’s wallet.
The CETUS team stated that the vulnerability had been patched, affected pool data had been corrected, assets and pools rebalanced, and a detailed compensation strategy implemented. A smart contract security audit was also conducted prior to the relaunch.
To fund user reimbursements, CETUS allocated 15% of its total token supply, including a portion initially reserved for the team.
Despite the setbacks, CETUS quickly reentered the top 10 decentralized exchanges by daily trading volume following the relaunch. However, the comeback wasn't entirely smooth—some users reported difficulties withdrawing funds from liquidity pools.
### Crypto.com Joins Formula One’s Exclusive Sponsorship GroupCrypto exchange Crypto.com has become one of the eleven global partners of the Formula One Group, joining an exclusive list of sponsors that includes Qatar Airways, DHL, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), Lenovo, and LVMH (EPA:LVMH).As the Formula 1 season kicks off in Australia, several racing teams have also secured sponsorship deals with major crypto companies. Gate.io will financially support Red Bull Racing this season, taking over from Bybit, which was the team's crypto sponsor last year.In the U.S., Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) has signed a sponsorship agreement with Aston Martin, marking a milestone as the first deal fully paid in USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins.OKX will continue its partnership with McLaren, the 2024 champions, remaining one of the team’s three primary sponsors alongside Mastercard (NYSE:MA) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Meanwhile, Binance and ApeCoin—a crypto project by Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club—have become official sponsors of Alpine.Kick Sauber has secured two crypto sponsors: Stake, a crypto betting platform, and CoinPayments, a payment processing firm. Kraken has teamed up with Atlassian Williams Racing.Cash App, the payments company owned by Square (NYSE:XYZ), has also become a major sponsor of Racing Bull, a Red Bull subsidiary team. While Cash App is not strictly a crypto company, it processes billions of dollars in digital asset transactions annually.Only two racing teams—Mercedes and Ferrari—remain without crypto sponsors this season. Previously, they were backed by FTX (which has since collapsed) and Velas, a blockchain firm.
