This week’s Deconstruction focuses on 21Shares’ mid-year report, tighter oversight of the crypto market and AI in Russia and the U.S., a radical restructuring at the Ethereum Foundation, Binance’s exit from Europe, the fight against international crypto crime, and a midterm look at Donald Trump’s presidency.
21Shares report and new trends
Despite bitcoin’s decline to $58,000 amid a strong dollar, 21Shares analysts kept their $100,000 year-end forecast, noting a maturing market and capital concentrating around four established areas instead of hyped NFTs and memecoins.
Key underlying narratives include tokenization of real-world assets, whose volume in closed institutional networks reaches $350 billion (thanks to DTCC’s launch of bond tokenization), the explosive growth of prediction markets to $57 billion, and the recognition of stablecoins as the industry’s main product connecting the banking system and blockchain.
State control of crypto and AI in Russia and the U.S.
Rosfinmonitoring is implementing the FATF Travel Rule standard: now, for any transfer of digital assets, platforms must transmit customer data, and transactions from 1 million rubles are subject to mandatory monitoring, which eliminates the anonymity of the P2P segment in favor of regulated brokers.
In parallel, a bill on AI was approved, introducing the concepts of “sovereign” and “national” models (larger than 1 billion parameters). Priority for state subsidies goes to networks on local infrastructure, cutting smaller startups off from government contracts.
Another sign of restricting dual-use technologies was the closed release of OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber for automatic code fixing. Due to export controls, the U.S. forced the similar model Claude Mythos 5 from Anthropic to be disabled, although in AISI tests it outperformed GPT-5.5. To avoid blocks, OpenAI coordinated the launch with authorities and opened the free Patch the Planet program for auditing open-source projects, marking the end of uncontrolled AI use in cybersecurity.
Corporate overhaul at the Ethereum Foundation
The Ethereum Foundation is cutting its budget by 40% and laying off 20% of staff (54 people), turning into an endowment fund with a goal to reduce reserve spending from 15% to 5% by 2030. Vitalik Buterin urged following Bitcoin’s example by choosing stability over new features and closing the privacy research unit (Privacy and Scaling Explorations), as the experimentation phase is over and technologies should be integrated into the protocol.
Against this backdrop, addressing critical technical issues — such as the threat of a hidden MEV tax, builder cartelization, and network centralization risks — is shifting to independent commercial labs like Ethlabs, founded by former foundation researchers.
Binance withdraws application in Greece
Crypto exchange Binance proactively withdrew its application for a license in Greece after Reuters reported the regulator was prepared to deny the platform, deciding to redirect resources to obtain authorization in another European jurisdiction.
Under MiCA’s strict framework, a “passporting” mechanism applies across all 27 EU countries. However, analysts estimate that up to 75% of the 3,000 crypto companies previously operating in the region will close or leave this market due to an inability to operate to traditional European banking standards.
Delays by Binance are leading to market share losses in favor of Coinbase and Kraken, which have already secured licenses, and for ordinary users this threatens forced account closures and the blocking of euro fiat gateways by European banks.
A blow to criminal IT infrastructure
The U.S. Department of Justice changed its strategy against the shadow market: instead of the less effective blocking of wallets, the agency seized a cloud account of the Huione Group conglomerate, whose server infrastructure supported the criminal marketplace Haowang Guarantee, which laundered at least $4 billion in illicit funds via stablecoins and bitcoin.
At the same time, Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation dismantled a scheme of gray Chinese capital with a $300 million annual turnover, where illegal mining using electricity stolen from a state company (causing $29 million in damage) was used to legitimize proceeds from Myanmar scam centers.
Fraudsters’ large-scale use of stablecoins is forcing regulators to pressure coin issuers and major exchanges, which will lead to automatic freezes of transfers and stricter KYC/AML for retail investors.
Trump’s crypto policy so far
At the midpoint of Donald Trump’s presidency, which received $238 million from crypto lobbyists, there is fulfillment of key campaign promises: firing Gary Gensler from the SEC, ending actions against major crypto companies, creating a strategic bitcoin reserve (328,000 coins exclusively from seizures), a legislative block on a digital dollar until 2030, passage of a stablecoin law (GENIUS Act), and pardons for Ross Ulbricht and CZ.
However, lobbying for laws and executive orders to move federal systems to post-quantum cryptography are taking place against the backdrop of Trump launching personal family memecoins (TRUMP, MELANIA), where 80% of the supply belongs to family-affiliated structures, which triggered accusations from Democrats of exceeding impeachment standards. Meanwhile, despite unprecedented political support in the U.S., the crypto market has fallen 28% since the start of the year.
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