Ether Machine launches for Institutional Yield after the GENIUS Act

Institutional interest in cryptocurrencies was piqued after “Crypto Week” in the US saw the passage of the industry’s key stablecoin bill, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act.

Signed into law by US President Donald Trump on July 18, the GENIUS Act bans yield-bearing stablecoins in the world’s largest economy, which may increase the demand for Ether (ETH) and Ethereum-based yield-generating decentralized finance protocols, according to industry watchers.

Signaling growing demand for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, a group of crypto researchers and public market experts announced the launch of the largest yield-bearing Ether fund for institutional investors, called Ether Machine.

The company plans to create a publicly traded vehicle for institutional-grade Ether yield and infrastructure exposure, planning to invest over $1.5 billion in Ether to form “one of the largest onchain ETH positions of any public entity.” 

Ether Machine to launch $1.5 billion institutional ETH yield fund

A team of crypto-native researchers and public market experts is preparing to launch what it calls the largest yield-bearing Ether fund targeting institutional investors.

The company, called Ether Machine, plans to create a publicly traded vehicle offering institutional-grade exposure to Ethereum infrastructure and Ether (ETH) yield, it announced on Monday.

It is co-founded by Andrew Keys, a former board member and head of global business development at Consensys, and David Merin, a former corporate development executive at Consensys who now serves as Ether Machine’s CEO.

Ether Machine aims to “expand Ethereum’s economic security as the base layer for the next era of global finance and computation,” according to its website.

The company will be formed through a combination of The Ether Reserve and Dynamix Corp, a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company.

Following this, Ether Machine plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ETHM,” with over 400,000 ETH worth more than $1.5 billion under management at launch.

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Strategy launches Bitcoin stock pegged at $100 to increase treasury

Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, is launching a new type of stock offering to raise additional funds for further investment in the cryptocurrency.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy announced plans to conduct an initial public offering of 5 million shares of Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock (STRC).

Strategy will use the net proceeds for “general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin and for working capital,” it announced on Monday.

Unlike previous offerings, the STRC Stock will accumulate cumulative dividends at a variable rate on the stated amount of $100 per share. The initial monthly regular dividend will be 9% annually.

The announcement came two weeks after Strategy announced a $4.2 billion at-the-market (ATM) offering on July 7, which functions as an equity-raising mechanism designed to enable the firm to sell newly issued shares to buy more Bitcoin (BTC).

The new offering will be available through an initial public offering (IPO) to “select investors,” Saylor said in a Monday X post.

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Blockchain compliance tools can slash TradFi costs: Chainlink co-founder

Blockchain-based investment products and compliance tools are poised to become more than 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional finance (TradFi) offerings, spurring increased digital asset adoption by financial institutions.

Traditional financial compliance products are often fragmented and expensive due to complex manual processes, resulting in billions of dollars in costs.

“Compliance is an inefficient part of the traditional finance industry that a lot of people are not happy about, including identity verification of AML and KYC,” Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov told Cointelegraph during the RWA Summit 2025 in Cannes.

“If you compare what it costs and how complicated it is to make a compliant transaction in the TradFi world, our industry should be able to do it 10 times faster and cheaper,” he said. “It’s like a huge cost problem for the TradFi industry.”

Nazarov added that solving this inefficiency could “unblock a bunch of institutions from being able to put capital onchain.”

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Crypto hacks surpass $3.1 billion in 2025 as access flaws persist: Hacken

More than $3.1 billion in crypto has been lost in the first half of 2025 due to issues including smart-contract bugs, access-control vulnerabilities, rug pulls and scams, according to a report from blockchain security auditor Hacken.

This figure already exceeds the total of $2.85 billion from all of 2024. While the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February may have been an outlier, the broader crypto sector continues to grapple with security challenges.

The distribution of loss types remains largely consistent with trends observed in 2024. Access-control exploits have been the primary driver of losses, accounting for around 59% of the total. Smart-contract vulnerabilities contributed about 8% of the losses, with $263 million stolen. 

Yehor Rudytsia, head of forensics and incident response at Hacken, told Cointelegraph that they observed significant exploitation of GMX v1, with its outdated codebase being targeted starting in Q3 2025.

“Projects have to care about their old or legacy codebase if it was not stopped from operating completely,” Rudytsia said.

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CoinDCX announces white hat recovery bounty after $44 million hack

Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDXC announced a recovery effort after falling victim to a $44 million exploit on July 18, with the firm pledging a bounty for ethical hackers who help retrieve the stolen funds.

CoinDXC’s internal accounts used for “liquidity provision” were exploited, leading to $44 million worth of cryptocurrency being stolen, while user funds remained unaffected.

In an effort to recover the stolen funds, CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta announced a new recovery bounty program that offers white hat hackers up to 25% of any recovered funds they can help trace and retrieve.

“The exposure was from our own reserves, and we have already absorbed it through our corporate treasury,” said Gupta in a Monday X post, adding:

“More than recovering the stolen funds, what is important for us is to identify and catch the attackers, because such things shouldn’t happen again, not with us, not with anyone in the industry.”

The hack “doesn’t impact any of our customers and the platform continues to run as normal,” he added.

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DeFi market overview

According to Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.

Solana-native memecoin launchpad Pump.fun’s (PUMP) token fell over 50% as the week’s biggest loser, followed by the Sonic (S) token, down over 20% on the weekly chart.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.