The Block

THE BLOCK: Web3Auth says it moved $5.6 million out of Keplr wallets exposed by a flaw in its Google and Apple login service before hackers could take it. It also referred to an “original attacker” who hit some wallets first, but hasn’t said how much was stolen.

THE BLOCK: Vitalik Buterin says ETH should be valued as a store of value, not a fee-burning token. He said the burn "was never a true floor" and that optimizing for fees would require heavy protocol spending and interventionist governance. Buterin said Ethereum should keep its fee burn, but holders "should not feel sad" if it stays below 10% of breakeven indefinitely. Ethereum has burned about 19,200 ETH so far this year, down from 1.48 million in 2022, per The Block’s data. The thread comes five weeks after the authors of a proposal to burn a rising share of staking rewards withdrew it following industry pushback.

ICYMI: Collateral sits idle on a just-in-case basis, prepositioned over weekends and before the close. "When you have an asset in tokenized form, you can now make those assets productive." DTCC's Tom Pikett on why collateral mobility is tokenization's most compelling business case.

ICYMI: "Everyone knows that there's great pools of liquidity, the rates are good, but you can't access it in a way that your risk team is comfortable with." Anchorage Digital's AJ Macey says institutions are moving into DeFi now because the plumbing finally exists, and the Chainlink integration is how Anchorage clients reach that liquidity without leaving qualified custody.

THE BLOCK: Binance CFO Kaiser Ng is leaving the exchange to pursue a new venture and will be replaced by Justin Yek, formerly VP of finance at Airwallex. The change, which Binance says has been planned for six months, comes nine days after hackers stole more than $6 billion from the exchange.

THE BLOCK: An ex-FBI agent pleaded guilty to stealing $2.47 million in crypto by searching agency databases for the credentials to wallets tied to FBI investigations. He paid $20,000 toward a Lexus and planned a move to Portugal, which ChatGPT had recommended, per court docs.

THE BLOCK: Bitcoin ETFs lost $1.28 billion last week, their worst week since June, which leaves them down $914 million for 2026. Ether funds have now had six straight losing weeks, and Solana and Hyperliquid ETFs are on their longest outflow streaks since launch.

ICYMI: "It might be that intraday repo is a really compelling use case for you if you are a global bank that needs sterling for two hours in the morning." DTCC's Tom Pikett on why the tokenized collateral pitch is optionality. One bank's pain is intraday liquidity, another's is moving collateral between CCPs, and DTC still sits behind the tokenized entitlement.

ICYMI: "As more things come on chain, there'll be more and more opportunity for those assets to become productive." Anchorage Digital's AJ Macey says tokenization feeds collateral: once Anchorage custody supports an asset and can liquidate it, clients can put treasuries, money market funds, and equities to work across the ecosystem.

THE BLOCK: The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has cut off crypto exchange MEXC Global from the U.S. financial system after it said it facilitated $16 billion in illicit transactions tied to Iran, Russia, and North Korea. "Financial institutions cannot have it both ways: Either you support the Iranian regime, or you have access to the U.S. financial system," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

THE BLOCK: The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has withdrawn a proposal from 2020 called the "Travel Rule" that would have required financial institutions and crypto businesses to collect identifying information about people involved in certain transfers. "The Agencies believe that there have been significant recent developments in the CVC industry since the proposal was issued," FinCEN said on Friday.