Zcash Nears Ironwood Upgrade to Restore Supply Confidence

Zcash developers said on Thursday that the privacy coin's Ironwood upgrade is approaching testnet activation, moving the network closer to letting users verify its circulating supply. The overhaul introduces a fresh shielded pool and accounting system engineered to prove supply integrity while keeping transactions private.

Ironwood answers the Orchard vulnerability disclosed in May, a four-year-old flaw that could have minted unlimited counterfeit ZEC undetected. Security researcher Taylor Hornby uncovered it using Anthropic's AI tooling, and although developers patched the bug on June 1, privacy features left exploitation impossible to rule out.

The disclosure triggered a brutal selloff, with ZEC shedding more than half its value in two days, tumbling from above $600 toward $300 before recovering. The coin has since clawed back roughly half those losses, recently trading near $457, according to CoinGecko data.

Shielded Labs said the steepest challenge remains migrating exchanges, mining pools, and wallets onto the new Z3 software stack before activation. Developers aim to finish both Ironwood and the migration by late July, weighing options like third-party audits or temporary legacy support to reduce deployment risk.

Americans Traded $571 Million on Polymarket Despite Ban

US-linked wallets traded roughly $571 million across Polymarket's political markets over the trailing year, topping every other country, according to onchain analysis firm Allium. The figure outpaced Hong Kong's $422 million even though the platform legally cannot serve American users and blocks them by IP address.

Allium found the block accomplishes little because Polymarket runs on crypto rails, letting a VPN and existing wallet bypass it entirely. Americans favored geopolitics heavily, with foreign-war and novelty markets drawing 46% of their volume against 16% for elections, exactly the contracts regulated US venues avoid listing.

Trump Token Buyers Down $3.8 Billion, Nansen Shows

Roughly two-thirds of TRUMP memecoin wallets sit underwater with combined losses of $3.81 billion, while President Trump earned over $1.4 billion from his crypto ties, according to Nansen data shared with CoinDesk. Profits concentrated among early buyers who entered under $1 before the token peaked near $75.

The TRUMP token changes hands around $1.79, down about 96% from its high, carrying a $425 million market value versus nearly $15 billion previously. World Liberty Financial fared similarly, with 85% of tracked secondary-market wallets underwater and combined losses reaching $83 million against $23 million in gains.

Revolut Notifies Customers of USDT Delisting in August

UK-headquartered banking platform Revolut notified some users it will delist Tether's USDT stablecoin, halting purchases from July 6 and completing full removal by August 31, citing regulatory and risk considerations. Remaining balances will automatically convert into users' base currency at the day's rate after the deadline passes.

The company declined to specify which regulations triggered the decision or whether it applies globally, though it holds a MiCA license granted in November 2025. USDT has faced gradual European delistings since 2024 after Tether refused to comply with the bloc's stablecoin reserve requirements.

Data of the Day

US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted around $527 million in net outflows across four trading days ending July 2, marking their eighth consecutive negative week and the longest such run in the funds' history. The stretch began in mid-May, when the products had never previously exceeded five straight outflow weeks.

The week closed strongly regardless, with $221.72 million flowing in Thursday, the largest single-day intake since May 5, led by Fidelity's FBTC. BlackRock's IBIT stayed negative, losing $40.43 million in an eleventh straight redemption day that has drained roughly $2.2 billion from the Bitcoin fund.

More Breaking News

• ESMA warned that some prediction-market event contracts may breach the EU's binary options ban when they function as financial instruments marketed to retail clients, regardless of labeling.
• Spotify asked Kalshi and Polymarket to drop its logo after removing over 500,000 fake streams that rigged a $3 million market on June's most-streamed US song.
• South Africa's SARS proposed draft guidance treating crypto as intangible assets under existing income and capital gains rules, potentially affecting the 5.8 million residents holding digital assets.
• Aave's newly launched Monad market topped $100 million in deposits within two days, while its V4 deployment separately crossed $250 million for a fresh all-time high.
• India's central bank reportedly backed a crypto containment strategy, recommending limits on banking-sector exposure and blocking crypto in payments, as lawmakers prepare digital asset policy recommendations.
• Russia's central bank governor said everything is ready for the digital ruble's rollout, with systemically important banks set to offer the CBDC to clients from September 1.
• Irish authorities seized another 500 bitcoins worth about $30.9 million in criminal proceeds, bringing the Criminal Assets Bureau's total 2026 haul to 1,500 BTC worth roughly $92 million.
• Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 isn't degraded, benchmarks suggest, as a paranoid safety router reroutes coding tasks to Opus 4.8, tanking debugging scores while blind human votes held steady.

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