[News Brief] Jul 9, morning | U.S. CFTC Chairman Says Passage of Crypto Asset Regulation Bill Is Very Near

BTC fell below $62,000

PANews, citing OKX market data, reported that BTC is currently trading at $61,992.10, up 0.47% on the day.

The chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said that passage of the Clarity Act is “very close” and emphasized that establishing federal standards for crypto assets is important

According to Bitcoin Magazine, the CFTC chairman stressed that the bill must be passed. The Clarity Act is designed to establish and organize federal-level regulatory standards for crypto assets in the United States.

PANews, citing EToday, reported that South Korean regulators approved Mirae Asset Consulting, an affiliate of Mirae Asset Group, to acquire a 92.06% stake in Korbit

The deal is worth about 133.4 billion won (approximately $98 million). The transaction is considered a notable case of a traditional domestic financial group completing the acquisition of a virtual asset exchange.

According to the Fair Trade Commission’s disclosed 2025 market share data for domestic virtual asset exchanges, Upbit holds about 69%, Bithumb about 28%, Coinone about 2%, Korbit about 0.5%, and Gopax about 0.1%. Authorities determined that Korbit’s low market share makes it unlikely that the acquisition will significantly affect competition in securities and asset management or the future structure of the digital asset ETF market.

Russia’s largest private bank, Alfa-Bank, has registered as a regulated digital asset custodian and plans to provide crypto-related services to retail and corporate clients, according to WuBlockchain

Alfa-Bank also plans to develop public blockchain-based investment products to attract overseas investors. The bank said it will pursue the related business after Russia’s new crypto legislation takes effect.

Sberbank and T-Bank had previously also announced plans to obtain digital asset custody licenses.

Decentralized AI protocol Prime Intellect raised $130 million in a Series A round, PANews reported on July 9

The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia Ventures, Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, and existing investors. Prime Intellect’s cumulative funding has now exceeded $150 million.

The funds will be used to build an open superintelligence stack. Founded in 2024, Prime Intellect provides infrastructure for AI agent development, including computing, large-scale reinforcement learning, sandboxing, evaluation, and deployment.

Robinhood Crypto said on July 9 that Robinhood Chain has been integrated into Robinhood Wallet

Following the integration, users can access cross-chain bridging, swaps, and discovery features across multiple chains including Solana, Ethereum, and Arbitrum directly within the app.

Reports said the U.S. Department of Justice warned internal staff that cooperation from Binance in crypto-related investigations could decrease

According to PANews, Cointelegraph cited The Information in reporting this. Binance denied the report, saying there has been no change in its level of cooperation with law enforcement agencies and that there will be no such change going forward.

According to PANews, security firm Scam Sniffer said a user lost about 999,999 USDT on Ethereum after signing approval for a phishing token

The attacker initially tried to withdraw $1 million but failed because the wallet balance was $631 short. Thirty-six seconds later, the attacker recalculated the balance and drained the remaining funds in full.

Scam Sniffer urged users to carefully review all signature requests and avoid hastily approving transactions.

Source: PANews

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a wallet believed to be owned by Multicoin Capital appears to be selling HYPE through Galaxy Digital.

At around 5:00 on the day, the wallet transferred 167,000 HYPE, worth about $11.2 million, to Galaxy Digital’s OTC platform via an intermediary wallet.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Matthew Sigel of asset manager VanEck said Bitcoin’s price will be “significantly higher” a year from now than it is today

Sigel said he is advising clients to gradually increase their Bitcoin allocation over the coming months. VanEck is a major asset manager offering digital asset-related products including spot Bitcoin ETFs.