Kappa Lab

2025 marked a pivotal year in Kappa Lab’s operations and performance. We’re proud to have supported some of the industry’s most ambitious protocols and builders. We expanded to Dubai, added 4 new business verticals, 13 new partnerships, 18 new exchange integrations, and sustained $15B in monthly trading volume. Together, these milestones reflect a broader trend: institutional-grade crypto infrastructure is scaling rapidly. Now in 2026, we’re building on this momentum with new initiatives already underway. Stay tuned.

👇 More from this week: - Russia's State Duma passed the country's first comprehensive crypto law, with a ~$3,800 annual retail cap per licensed intermediary; it awaits Federation Council approval and Putin's signature. - Attackers drained ~515M $NIGHT (~$10M, per BlockSec) from Wanchain's Cardano-BNB bridge; the Midnight Foundation said its core network was unaffected. - Augustus raised a $180M Series B at a $1B valuation, led by Tiger Global, to build what it calls the Global Dollar Bank, supporting SWIFT, ACH, SEPA, and stablecoin rails. - Strategy reported a second straight week with no bitcoin purchases, selling 2.73M $MSTR shares for $263.5M; its USD reserve reached $3.225B. - Digital Asset, developer of the Canton Network, added Shinhan and Standard Chartered's SC Ventures to its funding round; The Block reported the round now totals $365M at a $2B valuation. - MVMT Labs, original developer of the Movement blockchain, filed for Chapter 11 with up to $10M in liabilities; Move Industries said it is a separate entity and unaffected. - Galaxy committed up to $5M in grants and research to prepare Bitcoin for quantum computing threats.

Industry Catch-Up | July 23, 2026 $BTC at ~$65K. $ETH at ~$1.8K. 1) Senate Republicans are targeting a floor vote on the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill, before the August recess. Punchbowl News reported that President Trump approved the bill's ethics language on July 20, described as the final unresolved issue on the Republican side. The provision would restrict senior officials from profiting from digital assets while in office. Key Senate Democrats were reported on July 22 to be demanding stronger safeguards, and the bill needs 60 votes to pass. 2) BitMEX said it will shut down on September 23 after its owner, HDR Global Trading, decided to close the exchange following a strategic review. The venue, which pioneered the perpetual swap after its 2014 debut, halted new registrations immediately. Accounts will be restricted to position reductions from August 26, with remaining positions force-closed at shutdown. BitMEX said user assets remain fully backed and withdrawable. 3) S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital launched the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index, an 18-asset benchmark requiring protocols to generate revenue. BTC and $XRP were excluded; S&P DJI CEO Cathy Clay told CNBC that bitcoin is not a revenue-generating protocol. The top five constituents are $ETH, $BNB, $SOL, $TRX, and $HYPE. Pantera said the index's assets generated over $3 billion in annualized revenue across the past two quarters. 4) Arcus, the decentralized exchange built jointly by dYdX Labs and Robinhood Crypto, opened beta perpetual markets collateralized in Paxos-issued USDG, spanning equities, commodities, indices, and crypto. The venue has offered 24/7 trading on more than 95 tokenized US stocks since Robinhood Chain's July 1 mainnet debut and is not available in the US, Canada, or the UK. DeFiLlama data showed the chain's stablecoin supply near $439 million, up about 30% in a week. US Spot ETF Flows (July 16 to July 22): 🟢 BTC: +$710.50M 🟢 ETH: +$156.89M 🟢 XRP: +$14.93M 🟢 SOL: +$8.86M 🔴 HYPE: -$6.15M - On July 22, Grayscale's GBTC was the only spot BTC ETF in outflow (-$38.30M) while BlackRock's IBIT led inflows at +$38.78M; BlackRock's ETHA led ETH at +$53.47M. - HYPE ETFs held ~$300.64M in cumulative net inflows since their May debut, with net assets at $301.78M, 2.29% of HYPE's market cap. - Spot BTC ETF net assets stood at $80.36B, 6.08% of bitcoin's market cap; ETH ETF net assets at $10.57B, 4.54% of ether's. More in the comments 👇 #cryptonews #digitalassets #fintech #defi #web3

@grvt_io 🚀

$GRVT TGE will now take place on July 30. We know this isn't the update many of you were hoping for, so here's the full picture. $GRVT is launching across multiple major exchanges simultaneously, and that lineup is still growing. Since our last announcement, the first listings are confirmed, and we're in the final stages of securing more to go live alongside TGE. Listings follow coordinated timelines and can only be announced once every agreement is fully executed, so we’ll share the names the moment everything is finalized. What that means is simple: $GRVT will go live on more major exchanges from day one. More ways to buy and trade, deeper liquidity, broader global access, and a stronger market from the very first trade. Thank you for your patience and continued support. See you on July 30.

👇 More from this week: → Circle received final OCC approval to establish Circle National Trust, a national trust bank for federally regulated digital asset custody, with USDC reserve management planned as a future capability. → Arbitrum perps platforms Ostium and Cascade were exploited on consecutive days, losing an estimated $18M via falsified oracle data and $1.34M from its CLS vault, per PeckShield and the teams. → President Trump was expected to meet senators Thursday on the Clarity Act's unresolved ethics section, per CoinDesk, with a near-final Senate text said to be circulating this month. → NYSE Arca filed an immediately effective rule change raising options position and exercise limits on BlackRock's IBIT from 250,000 to 1 million contracts, per an SEC notice. → Coinbase's Jesse Pollak stepped back from leading the Base app; Jordan Fish, known on X as Cobie, will lead the app team. → Circle partnered with Argentina's Grupo BIND to give institutions regulated USDC access through BIND's BEN digital asset platform. → Grove and Galaxy announced a $500M warehouse lending facility to finance Galaxy's origination of loans secured by digital assets.

Industry Catch-Up | July 16, 2026 BTC at ~$64K. ETH at ~$1.8K. 1) DTCC ran its first live production trades of tokenized securities on July 15. The trades spanned stocks, ETFs, and US Treasurys. DTCC's depository custodies more than $114T in securities. The firm called this its largest tokenization production event to date. JPMorgan converted QQQ holdings into tokenized form. It also posted tokenized assets as collateral to meet CME Group margin requirements. DTCC plans to launch the full service in October. 2) Japan's upper house approved changes to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act on July 15, per NHK. The vote completed the bill's passage through the Diet. The law classifies crypto assets as financial products, introduces insider trading rules, and raises penalties for unregistered operators. It also sets the legal basis for a flat tax of about 20% on crypto gains. Current rates run as high as 55%. Per CoinPost, the tax change is expected to take effect in January 2028. The framework also lays the groundwork for domestic spot crypto ETFs, subject to FSA approval. 3) Galaxy launched GOFR on July 14, a managed lending program for institutions. It blends rates from protocols including Aave, Morpho, Spark, and Kamino into one borrowing rate, with Galaxy as the sole counterparty. The firm said it committed up to $100M as first-loss protection. On July 16, Galaxy also launched Galaxy Curator, a separate Morpho-based vault platform. Per CoinDesk, it gives Fireblocks' 2,400 institutional clients access to onchain yield strategies. 4) T. Rowe Price's Active Crypto ETF began trading on NYSE Arca on July 16 under the ticker TKNZ. The firm calls it the first actively managed multi-token spot exchange-traded product in the market. The fund holds 5 to 15 digital assets from a set that includes BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and HYPE. It is the firm's 34th active exchange-traded offering and its first in digital assets. US Spot ETF Flows (July 9 to July 15): 🔴 BTC: -$140.6M 🟢 ETH: +$63.1M 🔴 HYPE: -$7.5M 🔴 SOL: -$1.2M 🟢 XRP: +$107.4K → On July 15, no spot BTC ETF posted a net outflow; BlackRock's IBIT led at +$80.82M and Fidelity's FBTC added +$16.94M, while BlackRock's ETHA led ETH at +$45.29M. → HYPE ETFs have drawn $306.79M in cumulative net inflows since their May debut, now led by Grayscale's HYPG at $128.40M; HYPE ETF net assets stood at $346.88M. → Spot BTC ETF net assets stood at $78.47B, 6.02% of bitcoin's market cap; ETH ETF net assets at $10.40B, 4.48% of ether's. More in the comments 👇 #cryptonews #digitalassets #fintech #defi #web3

The World Cup is giving us a rare experiment in prediction markets. For a few weeks, every major venue is offering essentially the same product: who will win the World Cup. Same event, same audience, same timeline. The only real difference is where people choose to trade. So far, about $4.2 billion has traded on @Polymarket's World Cup winner market, just over $1.1 billion on @Kalshi, and roughly $329 million on @HyperliquidX's two month old HIP-4. Those numbers highlight something that is easy to overlook: launching a prediction market is becoming easier, but building liquidity is still hard. Liquidity shapes the entire trading experience. England's knockout match against Mexico generated roughly $400 million in volume on Kalshi alone. With that much participation, prices adjusted smoothly as goals, penalties, and the red card changed the outlook. The World Cup winner market tells a different story. The lack of liquidity resulted in sharp price bursts early on, very different from today as more participants entered the market. The contract stayed the same. The liquidity didn't. @Outcomexyz, one of the builders on Hyperliquid's HIP-4, says its World Cup match markets have traded with spreads as tight as 0.2¢, versus around 1¢ on other prediction market venues. Marketing, distribution, and liquidity incentives are becoming the name of the game. On Hyperliquid, @monarch_fast and @Outcomexyz launched a campaign paying traders up to $3,000 per day to keep World Cup markets active. Polymarket is offering liquidity rewards of up to $75,000 per match. @RobinhoodCrypto's new joint venture exchange traded 500 million contracts in June, while Robinhood chain is opening another distribution channel through @meridiandotxyz (formerly Ethereal), which is building on-chain prediction markets with combo bets. Different approaches, but all solving the same problem: building liquidity. The World Cup will eventually crown a champion, but it is also giving us something else: the clearest opportunity yet to compare how different prediction market ecosystems perform when competing on the exact same event, at the exact same time. As market makers, we know the real competition isn't predicting the winner. It's helping build liquid markets that people actually want to trade.

📌 We're hiring: Business Development Manager - Market Making We’re looking for someone crypto-native with strong commercial instinct, follow-up discipline, and the ownership to build and manage their own pipeline. This role sits at the intersection of DeFi protocols, exchanges, Web3 builders, token projects, foundations, treasuries, and institutional partners. You’ll help identify new market opportunities, build strategic partnerships, manage existing relationships, and work closely with the team to turn partner needs into practical solutions across digital asset markets. What matters most is DeFi curiosity, relationship-building, and the ability to turn conversations into qualified opportunities. 📍 Hybrid role based in London or Dubai. 👉 Apply here: jobs.gohire.io/kappa-lab-ltd-…

👇 More from this week: → The SEC placed "Regulation Crypto" on its 2026 agenda, targeting July to propose three rules on token sales, broker-dealer capital, and exchange trading of crypto assets. → The Supreme Court overturned Humphrey's Executor on June 29, expanding presidential power to remove independent-agency commissioners; the Fed was addressed separately in a companion case. → @eToro led a $12.5M round in onchain perps exchange @extendedapp, per CoinDesk, and plans to integrate its engine into the Zengo wallet. $ETOR → @paradigm raised a $1.2B fund, its third venture fund and fourth overall, to invest across crypto, AI, robotics, and other frontier tech. → Dinari and tZERO partnered on a turnkey platform for brokerages to offer tokenized US equities. → @solana's tokenized RWA ecosystem reached a $3.41B all-time high, per RWAxyz. $SOL → SpaceX ($SPCX) joined the Nasdaq 100 on July 7, bringing its 18,712 $BTC of disclosed holdings into the benchmark.

Industry Catch-Up | July 9, 2026 $BTC at ~$62K. $ETH at ~$1.7K. 1) @RobinhoodApp launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain on July 1, an Arbitrum-based L2 built for tokenized assets. Stock Tokens went live through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, though not in the US or to US persons. The firm also expanded perps in Europe beyond crypto to gold, silver, crude oil, FX, and ETFs, with up to 10x leverage. Eligible users in selected jurisdictions can also access onchain crypto perps on a new Lighter instance built for the chain. $HOOD 2) @Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for $216M to fund dividends on its preferred stock, per a July 6 filing. It is the firm's largest disclosed bitcoin sale to date, run in two tranches from June 29 to July 5. Strategy said it held 843,775 BTC and $2.55B in USD reserves as of July 5. It also disclosed an $8.32B digital asset loss for Q2. $MSTR $STRC 3) Stablecoin market cap fell $7.7B in June to $312B, per CoinDesk Data. That is the largest monthly drop since TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022. Three stablecoins lost their pegs in the month. Tokenized equities moved the other way. Onchain volume rose 145% to a record $3.86B, with tokenized SpaceX shares trading $1.19B around the $SPCX IPO. 4) JPMorgan's onchain money market fund JLTXX reached $693M in assets, per American Banker. That is more than double its end-May total. The bank said the growth came from stablecoin issuers parking reserves onchain to earn yield. The GENIUS Act bars stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield to their holders. The fund runs on Ethereum via Kinexys with a $1M minimum. $JPM US Spot ETF Flows (July 3 to July 8): 🟢 BTC: +$202.3M 🟢 ETH: +$118.1M 🟢 HYPE: +$16.1M 🔴 XRP: -$7.3M 🟢 SOL: +$1.4M → On July 8, @Grayscale's GBTC led spot BTC ETF outflows at -$63.69M while its Bitcoin Mini Trust was the only fund in net inflow (+$52.83M); ETH ETFs took in $70.48M, a fifth straight day of inflows, nearly all via Fidelity's FETH (+$69.21M). → $HYPE ETFs have drawn ~$314M in cumulative net inflows since their May debut, led by @BitwiseInvest's BHYP at ~$135M; HYPE ETF net assets stood at $355.48M. → Spot BTC ETF net assets stood at $75.34B, 6.05% of bitcoin's market cap; ETH ETF net assets $9.34B, 4.46% of ether's.

@world_xyz @RobinhoodCrypto 🤥

update: after careful deliberation from the team in the last 24 hours world has made the decision to migrate off of solana and onto @RobinhoodCrypto chain this tactful pivot was not made lightly our sincere appreciation goes out to the solana foundation and community

Lighter's Q2 investor call in 5 takeaways. The headline metrics were strong. The more interesting story is how Lighter is positioning its infrastructure for distribution past on-chain markets. 1/ Scale $131.1B in Q2 volume, $7.2M revenue, 142.3M trades, 14.2K daily active users. For a venue built around high-throughput execution, that is continued demand against a weaker market backdrop. 2/ Robinhood The most important update. Lighter isn't just adding a partner. It's testing whether DeFi market infrastructure can plug into consumer-scale distribution. Robinhood gets a separate Lighter environment with 25 live markets and a 50/50 revenue share, with settlement and proofs connected back to Ethereum. Separate experience, separate book, shared rails. The instance is still early, and because the book is separate, liquidity there will take time to form. The Robinhood Wallet product isn't available to US users yet; Lighter's parallel push for CFTC licensing is the piece that would need to clear before regulated perps could reach Robinhood's US app. 3/ RWAs 25+ new markets in Q2, including pre-IPO futures. The constraint now is liquidity depth. As harder-to-hedge assets come on-chain, market maker participation is what determines whether these markets function. This is the layer everything else waits on. Lighter has been aggressive on listings: it was first to launch an STRC perp on-chain back in March, ahead of other venues, giving traders leveraged access to one of the most scrutinized instruments in the Bitcoin-treasury complex. 4/ Infrastructure Execution got faster and cheaper. 99th percentile latency dropped to about 55ms and infrastructure costs fell roughly 50%, driven by scaling their trade-verification setup to 3,000+ Apple Silicon Mac minis. That matters for supporting larger flow and more complex products. 5/ Roadmap More collateral types, tokenized assets as collateral, RFQ, advanced orders, options. Options is the headline: building one engine that clears both perps and options is hard. Taken together: Lighter is building for distribution, interoperability, and institutional-grade market structure, not just a standalone venue.

More from this week: → @BlackRock will integrate @ethena_labs' USDe into its Aladdin risk platform and create a $100M liquidity facility for BUIDL; $ENA rose about 8%. → BNY made Circle's USDC the first supported asset on its Digital Asset Custody platform, letting institutions mint and burn USDC through the bank. → The @CFTC and DOJ sued Kentucky officials, arguing federal law preempts state gambling rules for event contracts on regulated markets. → @krakenfx's xStocks had offered tokenized pre-IPO access to Bending Spoons, which debuted on Nasdaq (BSP) July 1 at an ~$18.4B valuation. → SBI Holdings agreed to acquire Japanese exchange Bitbank for about $288.6 million. → @Securitize debuted on the NYSE July 2 under $SECZ, via its merger with Cantor Equity Partners II; shares rose about 3%.

Industry Catch-Up | July 3, 2026 BTC at ~$62K. ETH at ~$1.7K. 1) Strategy's enterprise value fell below its bitcoin holdings for the first time, Reuters reported, with mNAV at 0.99. It then unveiled a Digital Credit Capital Framework. It authorizes up to $2 billion in buybacks and a program to sell bitcoin. Those funds can cover its USD reserve, dividends, and interest. $MSTR also raised its $STRC preferred dividend to 12%. It holds 847,363 $BTC bought for about $64.1 billion. 2) @OpenStandard unveiled Open USD, a dollar stablecoin from a consortium of 140+ companies. Partners include @Visa, @Mastercard, @Stripe, @coinbase, and @BlackRock. It plans to share reserve income with partners and charge no mint or redemption fees. It is expected to launch later in 2026. Circle ( $CRCL), the issuer of USDC, is not a partner. Its shares fell to a four-month low, per CoinDesk. 3) Binance began restricting services for EU residents on July 1. The move follows its withdrawal of a MiCA license bid in Greece on June 24, before a formal decision. One member-state license passports across all 27 states. Binance said user funds stay accessible and that it plans to seek authorization in another member state. Reuters reported in June that the Greek regulator had been set to reject the bid. Binance disputed that. 4) Intercontinental Exchange ( $ICE), which owns the NYSE, and @okx said they formed a 50-50 joint venture. Called OKXICE, it aims to bring NYSE tokenized equities and ICE futures to OKX's 120 million users. Former NY governor Andrew Cuomo co-chairs it. It plans to operate as a US broker-dealer and futures commission merchant, subject to approval. Rollout is targeted for 2H 2026. ICE invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation earlier this year. US Spot ETF Flows (June 22 to July 2): 🔴 $BTC: -$2.32B 🔴 $ETH: -$287M 🟢 $HYPE: +$115.7M 🟢 $XRP: +$40.2M 🟢 $SOL: +$3.9M → On July 2, spot BTC ETFs posted a +$221.72M net inflow, ending ten straight days of outflows; Fidelity's FBTC led at +$165.96M while @BlackRock's IBIT was the only fund in outflow (-$40.43M). BlackRock's ETHA led ETH at +$29.74M. → HYPE ETFs have drawn ~$298M in cumulative net inflows since their May debut, led narrowly by @Grayscale's HYPG (~$123M) over @BitwiseInvest's BHYP (~$122M); HYPE ETF net assets reached $336.41M. → Spot BTC ETF net assets stood at $74.37B, 6.02% of bitcoin's market cap; ETH ETF net assets $9.02B, 4.38% of ether's.

@eToro isn't just backing a perps venue. It's positioning across the trading stack: - Distribution: its own multi-asset platform and 40M+ registered users - Custody: @Zengo, the self-custodial wallet eToro acquired in April - Execution: Extended, the onchain perpetuals venue this round backs eToro is a listed mainstream broker, not a crypto-native firm. Owning the wallet, the users, and a stake in the venue means it can move retail flow on-chain without handing it to anyone else.

@extendedapp @eToro @ZenGo Congratulations! 💜

eToro leads a strategic investment in Extended @eToro is now a strategic investor in Extended. The investment round also marks the beginning of a partnership between Extended and @Zengo, a self-custody wallet recently acquired by eToro. The partnership will focus on expanding access to global financial markets through next-generation on-chain infrastructure. Together, we will explore opportunities to bridge traditional financial assets and decentralized trading environments.

🧩 Putting it together → A buyback engine that has retired ~$974M of HYPE, scaling with usage rather than issuance → A permissionless market layer that priced two IPOs accurately → Regulated ETF wrappers absorbing float → A treasury vehicle trading near NAV → A prediction primitive sharing margin with perps Risks are visible. SPCX saw a ~45% intraday dislocation in early June. Monthly HYPE unlocks continue against a 1B fully diluted cap. The regulatory framework is unsettled. Five mechanisms, one execution layer. The open question is whether the perimeter accommodates that design or constrains it.

⚖️ The regulatory contest The incumbents are lobbying against the model, which is its own signal of scale. CME Group and ICE have pushed the CFTC and Congress to subject Hyperliquid to US registration, citing manipulation concerns tied to 24/7 commodity perpetuals. Hyperliquid is geoblocked in the US, which limits direct action. → ICE holds a ~$2B stake in Polymarket → CME launched its own 24/7 crypto products in the same window → The Hyperliquid Policy Center has filed comment letters arguing on-chain transparency is itself a surveillance mechanism The CLARITY Act will decide which framework applies.

🧵 $HYPE ETFs absorbed 1.04% of the token's market cap in their first 10 trading days. No US spot crypto ETF has matched that pace at debut. For context, same 10-day window, new issuers only: → HYPE: 1.04% → BTC: 0.59% → ETH: 0.41% → SOL: 0.31% Smaller base, but the demand per unit of market cap is the story. Here is what is driving it 👇🧵 @Kairos_Res