BitMEX is shutting down the exchange that helped turn perpetual swaps into one of crypto’s dominant trading products.

Swedish fund manager Alfakraft Fonder AB has added Bitwise Asset Management as a strategic partner, combining Alfakraft’s European fund infrastructure with Bitwise’s experience in crypto investment products.

Interactive Brokers has added nine cryptocurrencies to its trading platform and enabled clients to move dollar value out of their brokerage accounts through stablecoins, extending a service that previously focused on inbound funding.

Lawson, one of Japan’s largest convenience-store chains, will run a yen-denominated stablecoin payment pilot in August 2026 at its Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo.

Hyundai Card settled a $20,000 intercompany transfer between U.S. and Mexico affiliates in about seven minutes using USDT on Avalanche, with a European pilot involving Visa and Circle scheduled for late July 2026.

Brazil’s B3 exchange launched options on Bitcoin, Ether and Solana futures on July 6, adding regulated crypto volatility products to the country’s domestic derivatives market.

Russia's largest bank Sberbank plans to launch a crypto wallet and digital custody service inside its Sber and SberInvestments apps by early December 2026, following the expected implementation of the country's new crypto law on September 1.

Kalshi is no longer just a platform for predicting election outcomes or hurricane paths. In a recent interview on The Journeyman, CEO Tarek Mansour revealed that crypto has become the exchange's fastest-growing vertical, exploding 25x in volume since the start of the year.

Standard Chartered has integrated stablecoin access directly into its banking infrastructure through a partnership with Circle, announced on July 2, 2026.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee has a specific analogy for where crypto sits right now, and it's worth unpacking.

Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, is now legally available in Japan, approved by the country's Financial Services Agency and distributed through SBI VC Trade's VCTRADE platform to both institutional and retail users.

Hyperliquid's core perpetuals business has roughly halved since its peak. But underneath that cooldown, a different kind of trading is quietly growing on the very same infrastructure.