What has been happening this week in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies? Current events and background reports in our weekly review.
Selected articles of the week:
The bear market is taking its toll on the provider side. Global trading platform BitMart is shutting down after nine years. Founder Sheldon Xia built the exchange in 2017, with public trading in cryptocurrencies, derivatives and altcoins starting in 2018. In 2021, the platform suffered a hack of its hot wallets that caused USD 196 million in damages. This week the company halted new registrations, deposits and trading orders. Trading ends in late August, and the platform goes offline for good at the end of January 2027. That leaves customers a window of roughly five months. Anyone who fails to file a withdrawal request by the end of August must go through a separate procedure with additional documentation. The official explanation remains vague, pointing to operating conditions, the market environment and strategic direction. BitMart is not an isolated case: within a single month, AscendEX, BitMEX and BitMart pulled back, three larger exchanges in total. More than 30 crypto projects have already ceased operations this year, underlining the pressure the bear market is putting on established business models.
BitMart shuts down its global trading platform and ends trading on August 26, 2026, the third crypto exchange retreat within one month.
Brussels bars EU citizens from doing business with Justin Sun’s HTX
It is not only the market putting trading platforms under pressure; supervisors are stepping in as well. The EU has added crypto exchange HTX to its 21st sanctions package against Russia. HTX ranks among the world’s largest trading platforms and was founded in China in 2013 as Huobi. In 2022, Hong Kong-based billionaire Justin Sun acquired the majority stake, with the rebranding following a year later. The sanctions cover 18 crypto companies in total, 14 of which operate trading or payment platforms. They are domiciled in Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. EU citizens and companies face a transaction ban going forward, although the assets are not fully frozen. The measure takes effect around one month after adoption. The United Kingdom had already placed HTX on its blocked list in the spring. The exchange stresses that regulatory compliance is its highest priority. The effect remains questionable: after the British sanctions, analysts observed wallet rotations across TRON, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Solana.
The 21st EU sanctions package against Russia bars EU citizens from all transactions with HTX and 17 further crypto service providers.
Over 100 ecosystem players fund Ethereum’s bridge to the banks
While regulators are targeting individual platforms, the Ethereum ecosystem is organizing its own access to the finance industry. The non-profit organization Ethereum Institutional has closed its first funding round. More than 100 backers participated, led by BitMine, SharpLink and Ethereum co-founders Joe Lubin and Mihai Alisie. The size of the funding was not disclosed. The list of participants ranges from DeFi protocols such as Aave, Compound and Uniswap to infrastructure providers such as Circle, Chainlink and Fireblocks, and on to regulated players such as 21Shares, Galaxy and Robinhood. Layer-2 networks including Arbitrum, Optimism and Linea are represented, as are data services such as Dune and Etherscan. The organization sees itself as a neutral intermediary between the public Ethereum network and traditional financial institutions. It addresses banks, asset managers, custodians and regulators. The focus lies on tokenization, stablecoins, collateral systems and on-chain market infrastructure. Ethereum Institutional is one of three spin-offs from the Ethereum Foundation. Alongside it stand Ethlabs for protocol research and the for-profit EthSystems with its privacy focus.
More than 100 backers from DeFi, custody and Layer-2 networks jointly support the first ecosystem funding round of Ethereum Institutional.
Crypto.com brings wallet payments into the Emirates booking flow
Airline Emirates integrated the Crypto.com Pay service into its booking platform this week. Customers select the option at checkout, scan a QR code or approve the payment in the Crypto.com app. Funds flow directly from the wallet balance; credit card and bank transfer are not involved. For now, the offering is open only to UAE residents, and bookings must be priced in dirham. Regulation made the launch possible: Crypto.com’s Dubai subsidiary has held a Stored Value Facilities license from the UAE central bank since the spring. It is the country’s first crypto service provider with that permission and converts the amounts into dirham before forwarding them to Emirates. Cryptocurrencies in the travel sector are not new, however, as airBaltic has accepted Bitcoin since 2014. What is new is the native embedding into a booking platform via regulated infrastructure. Dubai, for its part, aims to process 90% of all transactions digitally by the end of the year under its Cashless Strategy.
The SparkKitty malware has been scanning the photo galleries of iOS and Android users for crypto seed phrases since at least February 2024.
Kaspersky finds trojans that search photo galleries for wallet backups
In addition: cybersecurity company Kaspersky is warning about a malware family that specifically targets crypto users. SparkKitty and the related SparkCat hide in inconspicuous apps for iOS and Android. Once installed, they access the photo gallery and upload images to external servers. The actual target is screenshots of wallet recovery phrases. Researchers classified SparkCat in early 2025 as the first known OCR trojan in the Apple App Store, while SparkKitty has been active since at least early 2024. A new variant surfaced in the spring that recognizes English-language mnemonic phrases for the first time. Affected apps included the SOEX messenger with more than 10,000 installations on Google Play, as well as several apps in the App Store. The malware also spreads through manipulated TikTok clones and enterprise profiles on iOS. Protection against it is simple: seed phrases never belong on a smartphone as a photo. Existing screenshots should be deleted and larger balances kept on hardware wallets.
Emirates now accepts crypto payments from eligible UAE residents, who pay for flight tickets out of their wallet in Emirati dirham.
