The phrase “we are still early” remains a popular sentiment in the crypto community in 2025, suggesting that despite bitcoin’s (BTC) price surpassing $100,000, the overall adoption of digital assets is still in its infancy.

Morgan Stalney’s recent survey of financial professionals confirms this sentiment. The investment banking giant surveyed more than 500 summer interns in North America from June 10 to 27, and 147 summer interns in Europe from June 26 to July 7.

The survey revealed that only 18% of interns own or use cryptocurrencies, increasing from 13% the previous year. Meanwhile, the percentage of interns interested in digital assets has risen to 26% from 23%. Meanwhile, 55% still do not care for digital assets, a majority, although the number has receded from 63% last year.

The widespread lack of interest appears significant, especially considering that BTC has already gained acceptance on Wall Street through the introduction of ETFs.

The 11 spot BTC ETFs have amassed $53.7 billion in investor wealth since their debut in January last year, according to data source Farside Investors. Ether ETFs have registered an inflow of $12.4 billion. Corporations are rapidly adding both assets to their balance sheets.

BTC’s price has surpassed $100,000 this year, gaining a foothold in institutional investor portfolios. Ether hit a record high of over $4,800 on Friday.

More open to AI

The survey revealed a clear adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by future finance industry leaders, with 96% of U.S. interns and 91% of their European counterparts reporting the use of technology at least occasionally.

The consensus is that AI is effective, with nearly all respondents agreeing they “save me time” and are “easy to use”. However, 88% of interns also had a nuanced view, believing the technology still “needs accuracy improvement.”

The widespread adoption is consistent with the sentiment on Wall Street, where the Mag 7 firms are expected to spend $650 billion in capital expenditures and research and development this year.

Trillion dollar humanoids market

The survey revealed that most interns are interested in owning humanoids, or sophisticated machines designed with a human-like form and capabilities, but are cautious about their impact on society.

Over 60% of U.S. interns and 69% of European interns expressed interest in having a humanoid at home, with both regions believing the robots will have “viable use cases” and replace many human jobs.

Still, only 36% of U.S. interns and 24% of Europeans agreed that humanoids will have a positive impact on society.

Morgan Stanley estimates that the humanoid market could surpass $5 trillion by 2050, including sales from supply chains and networks for repair, maintenance and support.

“Although humanoids are still under development, there could be more than 1 billion by 2050, with 90% used for industrial and commercial purposes,” the investment banking giant said in a report in May.

Trading Volume May Signal Tops & Bottoms For Bitcoin

In a new post on X, Santiment has talked about a pattern associated with the trading volume of Bitcoin. The “trading volume” here refers to a metric that keeps track of the total amount of the cryptocurrency that’s becoming involved in trading activities on the various centralized exchanges.

When the value of this metric is high, it means the traders are making a large number of moves on the market. Such a trend suggests interest in the asset is high. On the other hand, the indicator having a low value implies investors may not be paying much attention to the cryptocurrency as they are participating in a low amount of activity.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the trading volume for Bitcoin and other top coins in the sector over the last few months:

In the above graph, Santiment has highlighted two large spikes in the trading volume of Bitcoin. The first of these, involving a movement of $84.08 billion in the asset, occurred at the start of April. Interestingly, this spike coincided with BTC’s tariff-driven dip. The other spike took place just earlier this month and saw the indicator hit a high of $90.90 billion. This time, the elevated trading volume came alongside BTC’s new all-time high (ATH) above the $124,000 level.

“Note that the two largest volume spikes from Bitcoin signaled the optimal time to buy (as prices were falling) and sell (as prices peaked to a new ATH),” explains the analytics firm.

What could be the explanation behind the pattern? Generally, the higher the trading activity, the more likely BTC is to observe some kind of volatility. This is because the moves being made by investors act as fuel for price moves.

Where the emerging volatility may lead the asset is hard to say based on the trading volume data alone, as it doesn’t separate between buying and selling moves. Spikes that come near price lows, however, can be signs of buying. This is what happened in April. Similarly, a particularly sharp uptick in activity after rallies, like the one seen earlier in the month, can be a sign of profit-taking.

At present, Bitcoin trading volume remains elevated, but its current value of $66 billion is clearly still a step below the levels seen during the aforementioned turnarounds.

BTC Price

Bitcoin has been facing sustained bearish momentum recently as its price has gradually been sliding down, with its latest value coming at $113,000.

The following is a guest post and opinion of Rostyslav Bortman, Founder of Ethereum Ukraine.

Even in wartime Kyiv, innovation doesn’t pause. At ETHKyiv 2025, more than 100 hackers proved it—shipping privacy-first dApps, competing for grants, and showing what’s possible when the world’s toughest challenges meet Web3 grit.

But the real shockwaves came from the founders themselves: Vitalik Buterin and Tomasz K. Stańczak, Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation, who both appeared as the event’s online speakers, dropped two bombshells—400 TPS on Ethereum L1 this year, and a near future where anyone can run a full node on their smartphone.

So what’s next for the protocol? When does 400 TPS arrive, and what does “Ethereum on your phone” actually mean for developers and users? Here’s what we learned at ETHKyiv 2025.

Next-Gen UX: Nodes on a Phone

Vitalik Buterin’s keynote at ETHKyiv 2025 cut straight to Ethereum’s core roadmap. The biggest reveal:

“Pretty soon you’ll be able to spin up a node on your smartphones and even smartwatches.”

According to Buterin, instead of relying on servers with terabytes of storage, soon users will be able to run a full Ethereum node “without heavy-duty resources.” This first-of-its-kind case will be possible thanks to zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs) that the Ethereum Foundation is currently implementing.

zkEVMs are making nodes drastically lighter, cutting storage through verifying transactions without revealing and importing any information about them.

On Ethereum’s L2s, zkEVMs already cut transaction costs by up to 90% and settle in their finality under three seconds. Buterin said the next step is bringing these improvements to the Ethereum mainnet, making blockchain interactions on it as fast and affordable as traditional web applications.

400 TPS with 3-Slot Finality by 2026

At ETHKyiv 2025, Tomasz K. Stańczak, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, spelled out exactly what’s next for Ethereum’s backbone: real performance gains on the mainnet itself.

He revealed that by the end of 2026, Ethereum will move to 3-Slot Finality (3SF), slashing average transaction confirmation time from 15 minutes down to only 36 seconds. For users, this will bring the experience of instant traditional digital payments while keeping all the benefits of decentralization.

Stańczak laid out the near-term milestones:

Ethereum L1 will hit 400 transactions per second (TPS) by the end of 2025.

Block gas limits will reach 100 million this year, with a jump to 60 million per block in a month or two (as of publication date—ed.).

For context: scaling Ethereum L1 is essential because it anchors the entire ecosystem, providing the security, settlement, and censorship resistance Layer 2s depend on. With faster mainnet throughput, users get greater assurance their transactions are finalized on a decentralized, global network—not bottlenecked by L2 operators.

As Vitalik Buterin summed up:

“The goal is to make Ethereum more private, more censorship-resistant, and at the same time, so easy that even people far from tech feel safe using it every day.”

What’s Really Fueling Ethereum’s Value and Mass Adoption?

For me and all the Ethereum followers, some big questions have always remained: what actually underpins Ethereum’s value, and what could trigger mass adoption?

When I pressed both Vitalik Buterin and Tomasz Stańczak for answers at ETHKyiv 2025, they each zeroed in on different but connected drivers.

Tomasz pointed to three non-negotiables: privacy, data protection, and transparency. According to him, these are precisely what enterprise clients and regular users now expect from any blockchain platform.

“Ethereum is a global network, and increased adoption directly boosts the value of the whole ecosystem,” he explained.

The more Ethereum is used for real-world utility—by businesses and by individuals—the more demand, and ultimately, value accrues.

Vitalik, meanwhile, framed the adoption question around financial utility. His thesis: mass adoption comes when Ethereum becomes the rails for real-world assets, particularly tokenized stocks and bonds.

“They’re the gateway to mass adoption and the bridge between traditional finance and Web3,” he said.

With heavyweights like BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, and Coinbase actively leveraging Ethereum for asset tokenization, we’re already seeing the lines blur between traditional finance’s $117 trillion market and Web3 infrastructure.

In short: Ethereum’s real value isn’t just speculative, but it’s being built right now at the intersection of security, privacy, and practical financial applications. That’s where mass adoption starts to look inevitable.

Why ETHKyiv 2025 Matters for Ukraine and Beyond

ETHKyiv 2025 indeed stood out for its access to global thought leaders. Despite all the war-related risks, developers here heard first-hand insights from Ethereum’s most influential builders.

As Stańczak himself described it:

“Enterprise, DeFi, explorations, AI, research, day-to-day problems, working with people—we have to understand the direction and give feedback. A lot of it.”

His daily routine—hours spent answering questions from developers—underscores how Ethereum’s power lies in its people, not just its protocol.

Crucially, ETHKyiv 2025 was never just another tech event on the calendar. Held against the backdrop of an ongoing war, it became living proof of something bigger: even in the darkest times, Ukraine’s tech community chooses to build, learn, and connect with the global ecosystem.

Throughout the hackathon, the wartime context was impossible to ignore, yet it wasn’t a shadow but a driving force. Performances by Moisei Bondarenko, the violinist-soldier whose music echoes through liberated Ukrainian cities, reminded everyone that innovation and humanity must go hand in hand. So did the tactical medicine session led by combat medic Artem Rudy, bringing practical skills and a sense of shared resilience to the room.

This is what set ETHKyiv 2025 apart: it was a gathering of minds and hearts, a testament to the persistence of community, curiosity, and shared values—even in wartime. The world watched not just for the tech, but for the spirit of resilience and solidarity that Ukraine’s builders brought to the stage.

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Solana Hits $200 in Altcoin Rally as Open Interest Shoots to $1.5B – Macro Data Shows Meme Coins Ready to Blow

July 22, 2025 • 10:00 UTC

Solana is up by 24% in the last week, and this morning, it hit $204, a 5-month high that everyone’s been expecting with bated breaths.

Many are sure this is the start of an altcoin season, and $SOL’s $1.5B rise in open interest in three days shows there’s some meat on the bone of that hope.

According to Sean Dawson (Head of Research at Derive), Layer-1s like Solana are benefitting from crypto-political developments like GENIUS and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

Ethereum is also greedy for that $4k level, and altcoins are burning red-hot at the moment. In such a context, how could meme coins, the degen darlings of the crypto world, not shoot up?

Memecoin trading volume is up by 14% in the last day, and many in the top 10 are showing ample upside in the last week.

Adding Solana’s resurgence and meme coins together, we get Snorter Token ($SNORT), an $ETH–$SOL presale that brings the cheapest, fastest, and most accessible trading bot to the table.

Check out the potential 100x meme coin that is Snorter Token on its official presale page.

Binance Altcoin Futures Shoot Up; Meme Coins Surge as Traders Chase AltSeason Hype

July 22, 2025 • 10:00 UTC

Altcoin futures volume on Binance hit $100B yesterday, the highest level since February 3.

Altcoins now account for 71 % of all Binance Futures trades, signaling a shift from Bitcoin, as traders aggressively rotate into riskier assets.

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s altcoin index shows altcoins are holding their own against $BTC at 49/100, suggesting a battle for dominance in the days or weeks ahead.

Massive altcoin momentum like this is bullish for meme coins. As traders take profit from blue-chip gains, capital naturally flows into high-beta, viral assets.

Big-name meme coins like $PENGU, $DOGE, and $WIF are already pumping, while early-stage presales like TOKEN6900 and Bitcoin Hyper appear to be catching the wave.

Here’s our list of the top meme coins set to explode as altcoin season approaches.

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A major cybersecurity incident has exposed sensitive personal and health records of tens of thousands of Americans.

In a notice, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) says 103,000 individuals across the United States with accounts on Medicare.gov are impacted by a data breach.

CMS says it discovered that user data had been compromised after receiving multiple complaints through its call center. According to the federal agency, hackers may have used information from external sources to collect data such as names, dates of birth, Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers, coverage start dates and ZIP codes to fraudulently create Medicare.gov accounts.

Once inside, the thieves gained access to more sensitive data, including provider details, mailing addresses, dates of service, diagnosis codes, services received and plan premiums.

“On May 2, 2025, representatives at our 1-800-MEDICARE call center flagged complaints from people with Medicare who had received a letter through the mail about the creation of a Medicare.gov account. However, these callers hadn’t created the accounts or asked anyone else to do it for them.

Noticing the similarities in the reports, we investigated further and discovered more cases of accounts created between 2023 and 2025 that matched this pattern. We quickly deactivated those accounts, while also launching a larger effort to find the bad actors who created them.”

The CMS is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tasked with overseeing the country’s healthcare programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Health Insurance Marketplace.

The CMS is encouraging affected individuals to get a free credit report from each of the three major nationwide credit reporting companies. The agency also says that it hasn’t received any reports of identity fraud or improper use of personal information as a result of the incident.

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The following is a guest post and opinion from Felix Xu, Founder of ARPA Network.

Walk into any of Cloudflare’s global offices and you’ll find some unusual decor. In San Francisco, it’s floor-to-ceiling lava lamps, known as “the wall of entropy.” In London, it’s the “unpredictable pendulums.” These aren’t just pretty backdrops—they are grist for the randomness mill, exemplifying the ongoing creative and engineering race for true randomness.

Randomness is the unsung hero of the modern internet—the cornerstone of encryption, the backbone of fair gaming systems, and increasingly, a critical component in AI verification. Yet, as we hurtle toward a future where crypto represents a growing share of the global economy and AI agents gain greater autonomy—particularly over financial operations—the integrity of randomness becomes not just a technical concern but an existential one.

The Myth of Perfect Randomness

Computer scientists have long sought an idealized version of randomness, embodied by the theoretical “random oracle,” a hypothetical black box providing truly unpredictable outputs for every input. Unfortunately, perfect randomness is practically unattainable. Instead, digital systems rely on pseudorandom functions—sophisticated algorithms designed to simulate randomness convincingly. Physical entropy sources, such as Cloudflare’s “wall of entropy” lava lamps or London’s unpredictable pendulums, serve as essential real-world seeds for these pseudorandom functions, introducing genuine unpredictability from natural phenomena into cryptographic processes.

Yet, this blend of physical entropy and pseudorandom algorithms isn’t foolproof. As MIT computer science professor Steve Ward points out, knowing an algorithm and its initial seed can enable prediction of supposedly random outcomes—such as the next card dealt in online poker. Such vulnerabilities underscore the critical importance of genuinely unpredictable and verifiable randomness in technology-dependent contexts, from digital gaming to financial security.

Verifiable Randomness in AI

Artificial Intelligence systems increasingly rely on randomness to ensure fair, unbiased, and robust outcomes, playing an indispensable role across diverse applications—from healthcare diagnostics to financial decision-making. Randomness helps AI models avoid overfitting by introducing necessary variability into training processes, making predictions and decisions more adaptable and reflective of real-world scenarios. However, when randomness is not verifiable, it becomes impossible to ensure that AI-generated outcomes are genuinely impartial and resistant to hidden biases.

Take, for example, AI-driven financial trading algorithms. These systems utilize randomness to explore various investment scenarios and prevent predictable exploitation. However, without transparent and verifiable randomness, financial institutions and regulators cannot confirm that the model’s decisions are truly unbiased. The integrity of randomness directly influences market fairness, as hidden biases could disproportionately favor certain assets or market participants.

Similarly, in generative AI applications such as language models, image generation, or personalized recommendations, the randomness parameter—known as “temperature”—profoundly affects output quality. A low temperature generates consistent yet potentially repetitive outputs, while higher temperatures introduce greater variability but risk unpredictable and unreliable responses. Without verifiable randomness, users and stakeholders cannot confirm that the model’s claimed temperature settings accurately reflect actual operational conditions—creating opportunities for covert biases and subtle manipulation.

Moreover, AI systems used in critical decision-making scenarios—such as autonomous driving or medical diagnosis—must reliably produce unbiased, equitable outcomes. Verifiable randomness ensures stakeholders can independently verify these systems’ fairness, significantly boosting public trust and regulatory compliance.

The Importance of Verifiable Randomness Functions (VRFs)

At its core, verifiable randomness addresses a fundamental paradox in our digital systems: how do we create unpredictability that can nevertheless be trusted? Verifiable randomness rests upon three pillars:

1. Unpredictability: The generated values cannot be anticipated in advance, even by the system’s creators or operators.
2. Bias-resistance: The output distribution contains no detectable patterns or skews that could be exploited.
3. Public verifiability: Anyone can independently confirm that the random values were generated according to the specified protocol, without requiring access to secret information.

Public verifiability distinguishes verifiable randomness from traditional random number generation. It creates a bridge between the necessary chaos of true randomness and the transparency required for trust. It may sound dramatic, but without that trust, insiders could rig AI algorithms and crypto platforms in their favor—plunging our civilization into a technological dark age.

Toward Decentralized Verifiable Randomness

Likewise, in blockchain systems, randomness underpins critical functions including validator selection, transaction ordering, and token distribution. When Ethereum selects validators for block production or when NFT platforms determine rare trait distribution, randomness decides outcomes worth billions. Any manipulation could allow malicious actors to gain unfair advantages, potentially undermining the entire industry.

The “stakes” (no pun intended) are particularly high in Proof-of-Stake systems, where validators are selected probabilistically. If validator selection becomes predictable or manipulable, attackers could corrupt the network by front-running blocks. Similarly, in DeFi, predictable randomness enables flash loan attacks and market manipulations that drain liquidity pools.

The ideal solution combines true randomness with decentralized verification—distributed networks generating collective randomness where no single entity controls the outcome, yet everyone can verify its integrity.

The Path Forward: Embracing Verifiable Randomness

As we entrust AI systems with greater autonomy and responsibility, verifiable randomness becomes not just a technical challenge but a foundational requirement for trusted systems. Organizations developing AI agents must prioritize verifiable randomness before shipping code—or risk catastrophe.

The technology industry stands at a crossroads. We can continue building AI systems and offloading more capital to crypto-systems on the shaky foundation of conventional randomness and opaque decision processes—or we can embrace verifiable randomness as part of a broader commitment to transparency and trust.

Without verifiable randomness, we’re building our future on digital quicksand. With it, we have the conditions for a flourishing future—where our technological superpowers work with us, not against us.

Over the past week, the $PENGU token has increased 24.8%, riding a wave of bullish momentum fueled by ETF speculation, aggressive whale accumulation, and the growing institutional interest in meme coins.

Beyond Memes: Gaming, NFTs, and Real-World Utility

Pudgy Penguins is a Solana-based memecoin launched in late 2024 with an 88.9 billion total supply.

Last December, the project airdropped 62.86 billion tokens to Penguin NFT holders and broader Web3 participants, accelerating distribution and sparking fresh liquidity.

The protocol now underpins NFT collectibles, real-world licensing, and gaming titles such as “Pengu Clash,” which had over 2 million users sign up for its early access phase.

SPENGU’s tokenomics revolve around community governance and ecosystem funding. Currently, with 560.74k token holders, these holders vote on feature upgrades and grant allocations, while fee-generated proceeds support development.

Ecosystem partnerships now extend beyond digital art.

Collaborations with NASCAR and Lufthansa enable users to earn reward miles through $PENGU purchases, while Walmart-licensed merchandise and a planned integration with Ledger hardware wallet push utility into mainstream channels.

Still, the whales have been the major driver of the $PENGU price. On June 28, a net buy of $24 million in $PENGU set the rally in motion. That influx overwhelmed sellers, pushing $PENGU from $0.015 support to today’s highs.

Similarly, bids across Binance, OKX, and Gate.io rose 80% over 30 days, while the sell wall shrank 18%, easing pressure. Most telling, traderpow’s 94 million-token purchase soaked up liquidity and signaled bullish conviction.

Whales have ramped up $PENGU accumulation after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recognized Canary Capital’s ETF filing. This saw the price rise to a six-month high, as investors anticipated the ETF, slated to allocate both $PENGU tokens and Pudgy Penguins NFTs.

On July 9, the SEC initiated a 21-day public comment period on the 19b-4 filing, which likely fueled further buying momentum.

Historical ETF updates in March and June spurred similar rallies, and as bids swelled while selling pressure eased, whales continued to accumulate $PENGU.

$PENGU/USDT Breaks Out from Bullish Consolidation – Can Buyers Sustain the Rally?

The 4-hour chart of $PENGU/USDT shows a bullish breakout following a period of consolidation marked by higher lows, which is a typical structure that reflects accumulation, where buyers steadily step in at higher levels, absorbing supply and gradually pushing the price higher.

From there on (more specifically from late June through early July), $PENGU’s price formed a mild descending channel while maintaining a rising support trendline. This signaled that despite short-term pullbacks, the broader demand base was strengthening.

The breakout occurred late on July 9, as price decisively moved above the upper trendline of the consolidation zone near $0.0135.

This move was technically significant and was also backed by a substantial jump in volume. When a breakout occurs with significant volume, it could be speculated that institutional or high-volume traders are participating. It’s not just retail-driven momentum.

Following this volume pump, $PENGU’s asset price immediately rallied into the $0.019–$0.020 region, approaching a psychological resistance level.

Psychological resistance levels often act as natural barriers where traders place profit targets or sell orders, which is why price momentum may temporarily pause or reverse around such points.

The area between $0.0135 and $0.0150, previously an overhead barrier during the consolidation phase, became a key support zone, as it’s the level where the breakout was initiated.

This view is further supported by the volume footprint chart, which reveals the underlying order flow dynamics during the breakout.

During the rally, transaction volume spiked above $2 billion, with aggressive buying and selling occurring in real-time.

In one of the breakout candles, total buy volume reached $983.35 million, but was outweighed by $1.08 billion in sell volume, resulting in a net delta of -95.25 million.

This suggests that sellers were actively offloading into strength, likely taking profits or initiating hedges against the rally. The next session also closed with a negative delta of -28.23 million, hinting at some lingering resistance.

If buyers remain active and rising volume pushes the price above $0.020, the uptrend may continue. A drop below the new support zone could lead to a pullback or extended consolidation. The market structure looks positive. Clear support and resistance levels will likely determine the next price movement.

The post $PENGU Soars 33% Overnight as Whale Frenzy & ETF Hype Ignite Memecoin Rally—What’s Next? appeared first on Cryptonews.