Microsoft is carving out an unusual role in the U.S.-China AI rivalry by selling OpenAI’s GPT models to major Chinese internet companies through its Azure cloud service. With OpenAI and Anthropic declining to enter China directly, firms such as ByteDance, Ant Group and Tencent can still access their technology via Microsoft. At the same time, some U.S. developers are moving to lower-cost Chinese models such as DeepSeek. Beijing is also rolling out new policies aimed at speeding AI adoption across the broader economy.

Grayscale Research says AAVE looks undervalued, estimating a baseline fair value of $80–$100 and a bull-case target of about $175 within one year if rules around tokenized real-world assets become clearer. The report projects roughly $60 million in protocol revenue this year using a discounted cash flow approach and notes AAVE was trading near $77 at the time cited. Grayscale also said it has pursued an SEC-approved Aave ETF, following its October 2024 launch of the Grayscale Aave Trust.

Syscoin said it has recovered and destroyed 5 billion SYS tokens that an attacker minted by exploiting a flaw in the project’s cross-chain bridge. The burn restored the token supply to its pre-exploit levels, but the bridge remains offline. The team has patched the vulnerability and said cross-chain transfers will stay suspended while additional validation is completed.

Rodney Burton, known as “Bitcoin Rodney,” pleaded guilty on June 16 in federal court over his role in the $1.8 billion HyperFund cryptocurrency fraud. He admitted to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes announced the plea alongside IRS-CI and HSI officials.

Binance said on June 15 that its SpaceX perpetual futures (SPCXUSDT) became the exchange's second-most traded product, trailing only Bitcoin futures. The contract posted more than $5.6 billion in 24-hour volume as of June 13 and has exceeded $9 billion in cumulative volume, as Binance reported holding over 60% of SpaceX-perps trading activity.

Inveniam Capital Partners said its proposed acquisition of the MANTRA blockchain project and affiliated entities is expected to close by June 30, 2026. The company did not disclose financial terms. Inveniam, which operates the Inveniam IO platform and has credentialed over $200 billion in private market assets, framed the MANTRA investment as its latest move to expand into digital-asset rails.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said the agency will assess perpetual futures listings on an asset-by-asset basis because different underlying assets carry different risks. The comments temper expectations of broad, across-the-board approvals after the commission cleared its first Bitcoin perpetual future last month. Selig said each asset class will require its own review rather than relying on the Bitcoin precedent.

ECB President Christine Lagarde is urging support for a digital euro as the euro zone’s main response to the expanding role of USD-pegged stablecoins in global payments, while arguing private euro stablecoins are not an adequate substitute. Dollar stablecoins have a market cap of around $317 billion, based on CoinMarketCap data. By comparison, euro-denominated stablecoins have less than a $1 billion market cap.

Thetanuts Finance said an exploit drained $2.1 million from a legacy vault associated with the DeFi options protocol. Thetanuts said the affected contract had been deprecated years ago. Blockchain security firm PeckShieldAlert reported that about $2 million in option tokens appeared to have been recovered through whitehat efforts.