Robinhood to Offer Crypto Futures in the US and Europe

Robinhood to Offer Crypto Futures in the US and Europe

Robinhood is planning to launch CME-based Bitcoin and Ether futures in the US and aims to offer perpetual futures for BTC and other tokens in Europe using licenses from its impending Bitstamp acquisition. The $200 million takeover of Bitstamp, expected to close in the H1 of 2025, would expand Robinhood's reach to Bitstamp's retail and institutional clients across multiple regions.

Despite these expansion efforts, Robinhood faces regulatory challenges, including a Wells notice from the SEC. CEO Vlad Tenev has criticized the SEC's regulatory stance on crypto, stressing the importance of American access to digital assets. However, Robinhood has stated there are no immediate plans to launch their crypto futures products to cliens this year.

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Polkadot's $245M Treasury Has 2 Years of Runway

Polkadot, an early Ethereum competitor, spent $87 million worth of DOT tokens in the first half of 2023, doubling its expenditure compared to the previous six months. The treasury, funded by DOT token inflation, now holds $245 million, estimated to last two years at the current spending rate. The largest expenses are marketing and outreach ($36m) and software development ($23m).

Despite reassurances from Web3Foundation CEO Fabian Gompf about continuous inflows, concerns persist about the sustainability of such high spending and the volatility of a DOT-denominated treasury, given a current net loss rate of $108 million per year. A detailed breakdown of expenditures is publicly available on the Polkadot forum.

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Pendle TVL Drops by $3B as Restaking Airdrops End

Pendle, a DeFi protocol that previously amassed over $6 billion in user deposits during the EigenLayer boom, lost more than a third of its funds over the past week as several markets expired. Users have withdrawn nearly $3 billion, primarily in liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), reducing the total value locked (TVL) to just above $3.7 billion. The withdrawals aligned with the maturity of top LRTs.

Many investors had deposited funds in Pendle and related projects to qualify for airdrops from EigenLayer and affiliated protocols. As some of these airdrops have already occurred, users are now reconsidering their investments, leading to hefty outflows. This has also impacted related protocols like Zircuit, which saw a 15% decline in deposited crypto value over the past week.

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Bitcoin Miner Iris Energy Has Raised $413.4 Million

Iris Energy, an Australia-based Bitcoin mining firm, raised approximately $413.4 million through stock offerings between May 15 and June 28 to fund its post-halving expansion. The Nasdaq-listed company plans to use the $425.3 million in cash reserves, including proceeds expected in July, to scale operations to 30 EH/s in hash rate capacity and 510 MW in data center capacity.

This funding, with no debt, will also support procurement for 2025 expansion and additional power capacity agreements. Amid efforts by many Bitcoin mining firms to expand post-halving, Iris Energy reported $53.4 million in BTC mining revenue and an $8.6 million net profit in Q1 2024, a turnaround from a $5.2 million loss in Q4 2023. Iris Energy’s shares have increased 85% this year.

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Data of the day

Report from CCData shows the market share shift of various centralized exchanges (CEXs) with Bitget having the largest increase, approaching a 40% gain, followed by Crypto.com, Bybit, Upbit, and Binance, which all exhibit positive growth.

On the other hand, several exchanges, including Digifinex, MEXC, Kraken, HTX, P2B2B, Bullish, Coinbase, Whitebit, Kucoin, and OKX, demonstrate a decrease in market share, with Digifinex experiencing the largest drop, nearing 40%.

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More breaking news

• Pump.fun saw its daily revenue jump to $1.99 million, exceeding the Ethereum network's $1.91 million to make it the largest revenue generator in DeFi.
• The German government reportedly transferred an additional 282.74 BTC, or roughly $17.64 million, to Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Kraken, according to Arkham.
• Sentient, an open-source AI development platform, closed a $85 million seed funding round, co-led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital.
• Sam Altman's Worldcoin welcomes four former executives from Tesla, Apple, Google, Meta, and X to boost Tools for Humanity.
• bNVDA, an ETH-based tokenized security backed 1:1 by Nvidia stock but not officially associated with the company, was launched for trading on the INX platform.

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