Crypto Biz: Bitcoin’s $116M self-custody wake-up call
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The US CFTC has filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency pool operator Trevor Vernon, alleging a $14.8 million investment fraud.
According to BlockBeats, on July 8th, the US CFTC filed a lawsuit against Trevor Vernon and his company, Argent Capital Management, on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that between March 2022 and February 2026, Vernon operated a commodity pool involving stock index futures, options, and crypto assets, raising approximately $14.8 million from at least 60 investors and falsely advertising investment performance, thus committing investment fraud. The CFTC claims that the transactions resulted in losses exceeding $8.6 million for investors. Vernon allegedly concealed these losses and misappropriated approximately $3 million to pay returns to investors, operating in a manner "similar to a Ponzi scheme," and misappropriated $136,000 for private jet travel. The regulator also points out that the transactions involved commodities such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is requesting the court to prohibit Vernon from continuing related trading and registration activities, recover illegal gains, impose civil penalties, and compensate investors.
Cumberland opened long and short positions totaling $70.38 million, with the main positions short major cryptocurrencies and US stocks.
According to BlockBeats, on July 8th, OnchainLens monitoring revealed that Cumberland deposited $4 million USDC into Hyperliquid this morning. The account currently holds long and short positions totaling $70.38 million. 86.37% of the positions are used to short major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, and SOL, as well as major US stock instruments, while 13.63% are used to long on indices such as the S&P 500. The account has accumulated a profit of $33.27 million.
Cryptocurrency financial institution Bitcoin Suisse obtains Abu Dhabi ADGM financial services license
Odaily Odaily reports that Bitcoin Suisse, a cryptocurrency financial services provider, announced that its subsidiary, BTCS (Middle East) Ltd., has received a Financial Services License (FSP) from the Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM) Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA). This license authorizes BTCS to provide regulated digital asset financial services, including custody, spot trading, and derivatives execution and hedging services, to qualified institutional and professional investors. (Businesswire)
Following the "end" of the US-Iran ceasefire, cryptocurrency and stock markets experienced widespread declines.
PANews reported on July 8th that, according to CoinDesk, the US launched airstrikes against Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ships, and Iran subsequently attacked Kuwait and Bahrain. US President Trump announced the "end" of the ceasefire with Iran, calling the negotiations "meaningless," causing a sharp drop in global risk appetite. Bitcoin and Ethereum fell by more than 2%, the CoinDesk 20 index fell by nearly 3%, and Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 futures fell by about 1.5% at one point. In the crypto derivatives market, BTC futures open interest declined slightly, while ETH triggered approximately $90 million in long position liquidations during the price drop. Overall, the 24-hour crypto market saw approximately $450 million in liquidations, of which approximately $350 million came from Altcoin trading pairs. Altcoins generally fell, and Solana erased all gains since July.
StarkWare CEO proposes a 4% annual inflation rate for Bitcoin instead of the 21 million coin cap.
PANews reported on July 8th that, according to Cointelegraph, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson posted on the X platform proposing to replace the current hard cap of 21 million Bitcoins with a 4% annual issuance rate. He believes the current hard cap is "unreasonable" because private keys will be lost over time, "and when time approaches infinity, all private keys will be lost." Ledger estimates that approximately 4 million Bitcoins have already been permanently lost. Ben-Sasson stated that a 4% annual issuance rate roughly matches the global population growth rate. This proposal has sparked strong opposition from the community. Opponents argue that the fixed cap is the core value of Bitcoin, and that Bitcoin can be divided into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, which is sufficient to address the issue of declining available supply.
A whale short$31 million worth of Bitcoin at 40x leverage and is currently seeing a floating profit of $112,400.
According to Mars Finance, on July 8th, Onchain Lens monitoring revealed that the whale address "0x77ee" recently opened a 40x leveraged short position of 493 Bitcoins (approximately $31.08 million) on Hyperliquid. The opening price was $63,240.9, and the liquidation price was $73,962.2. Currently, this position has a floating profit of approximately $112,400, with a return on equity (ROE) of 14.47%. Data shows that this address currently holds 15 positions with a total open interest of approximately $79.79 million, of which 92% are short positions. However, the address's historical cumulative trading losses still amount to $5.66 million.