🇺🇸 U.S. freezes $131M in crypto linked to Iran

The U.S. Treasury has frozen $131 million in USDT across four Tron wallets allegedly linked to the Central Bank of Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced.

The freeze comes as tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate. Earlier this year, Tether also froze $344 million in USDT at the request of U.S. authorities.

👀 The case highlights that centralized stablecoins like USDT can be frozen following law enforcement requests.

Source:
🐦 https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/2077162473921319055?s=20

🇯🇵Japan officially recognized cryptocurrencies as financial assets.

The country's parliament passed a law that moves crypto assets from the scope of the Payment Services Act into the category of financial assets.

Stricter rules will begin to apply to the crypto market, including a ban on insider trading and increased liability for the activities of unregistered market participants.

The new status of crypto assets may also create conditions for active participation by banks, funds, and other institutional investors in the industry.

The new regulations are expected to come into force within a year.

📰 @Cryptoz

🇨🇿 Czech Republic has ordered ISPs to block Polymarket after adding it to its blacklist of unauthorized online gambling websites.

Internet providers must restrict access within 15 days. The move follows similar actions against prediction markets across several EU countries.

📰 @Cryptoz

Prediction markets reached a record $113.8B in trading volume in Q2 2026, even as the broader crypto market slowed down.

Spot trading on centralized exchanges fell 27.9%, while the stablecoin market shrank 1.6%. In contrast, prediction markets continued to grow, driven by sports and political events.

Meanwhile, the total crypto market capitalization declined 12.6% to $2.1T during the quarter.

📰 @Cryptoz

📊 Polymarket now holds a 93% share of the political prediction market by volume.

📰 @Cryptoz

🔽About 40% of alts are currently trading at historical lows and have failed to rise despite rebounds

This makes this bear market the worst in crypto history 👀

📰 @Cryptoz

#ada
😳 The Wanchain cross-chain bridge on the Cardano blockchain was hacked – a hacker managed to steal 515m NIGHT.
Damage: ~ $10,000,000.

The Midnight Foundation stated that the incident does not affect the Midnight protocol itself, its validators, consensus, or core infrastructure.

📰 @Cryptoz

🐂 Bullish factor for #ETH – the queue for Ethereum staking withdrawals has dropped to zero.

Meanwhile, investors are massively moving assets into staking – entry queues are nearly 2,500,000 ETH ($4.8b).

📰 @Cryptoz

🤖 Franklin Templeton: AI agents will become the main driver of mass cryptocurrency adoption.

According to the company's analysts, AI agents will make trillions of micropayments between themselves. Traditional banking systems are too slow and expensive for this, so blockchains could become the foundation of the new economy.

The main potential beneficiaries are Aptos (#APT), Solana (#SOL) and BNB Chain (#BNB).

📰 @Cryptoz

🗣 By 2036, money will lose its meaning, — Elon Musk

Why do people need money? To obtain goods and services: food, housing, transportation, and entertainment.

But if robots and AI produce more goods and services than any human can physically consume, then why would money be needed at all?

📰 @Cryptoz