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:
Strategy’s variable-rate preferred stock STRC closed this week at $89, 11% below its par value of $100. The instrument works much like a bond: investors hand Strategy capital and receive a monthly dividend in return, the rate of which the company continually adjusts to keep the price near $100. The rate currently stands at 11.50% per year. As with the entire preferred-stock program, the proceeds flow into Bitcoin purchases. This model worked as long as the common stock MSTR traded above the value of the Bitcoin reserves, since fresh equity could then be raised cheaply. With Bitcoin’s decline to around $63,000, almost 29% below the start of the year, MSTR is approaching this net asset value (NAV), making capital raises considerably harder. Across all preferred series, Strategy must service roughly $1.7 billion in dividends over the coming year, while the software business generates only around $477 million in revenue. The liquidity pool reserved for this shrank from $2.25 billion at the start of the year to around $900 million, covering about seven more months. Accordingly, Strategy sold Bitcoin in late May for the first time since December 2022 to service dividends. The treasury company must now hope for a swift recovery in the largest cryptocurrency to ease its balance sheet.
Strategy’s STRC preferred stock closes 11% under par at USD 89, its lowest level since the July 2025 IPO. What lies behind the sell-off.
CME Group takes CFTC to court over perpetual futures
Futures exchange CME Group filed suit against US regulator CFTC this week. The accusation: the agency wrongly authorized perpetual futures as regulated futures contracts rather than as swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act. The trigger was the late-May approval that opened access for Kalshi’s BTCPERP as the first US-regulated perpetual future, as well as for Coinbase Financial Markets via Deribit’s Dubai platform. CME chief Terrence Duffy argues that the funding-rate mechanism, with payments between long and short positions, is legally a swap. The CFTC had previously always treated perpetuals as swaps, blocking Bitnomial’s self-certification in April 2025, for example. Behind the legal dispute, however, lies tangible self-interest: perpetual futures target the exchange-traded derivatives business that forms the core of CME. The opposition is thus driven as much by commercial as by legal concerns. CME also warns of leverage disparity. Offshore venues allow up to 250x, US-authorized ones 50x, and CME’s own crypto products around 5x.
CME Group sues the CFTC after the regulator approved perpetual futures as futures rather than swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act.
Gambling industry presses Senate to ban prediction markets
Elsewhere too, an established industry is fighting disruption from new trading venues. Several US gaming associations and labor unions formally called on the Senate to ban sports prediction markets in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The coalition comprises the American Gaming Association, the Indian Gaming Association, and the unions AFL-CIO Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and UNITE HERE. They describe platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket as “the largest expansion of gambling in recent US history,” emerging within 18 months without a public vote or legislative authorization. The objection is not entirely unfounded, since prediction markets on individual sporting events resemble classic sports betting in their outcome. At its heart lies a jurisdictional dispute between the CFTC and state gambling regulators. The CFTC recently published a proposal that permits most sports-related contracts and bans only casino-style and injury-related wagers as well as college competitions. How things proceed for the industry is being debated across various court disputes.
US gaming associations want to ban sports prediction markets in the crypto bill Clarity Act. The CFTC is steering against this with its proposed rule.
Greece heads toward rejecting Binance’s MiCA license
Greece’s regulator HCMC intends to reject Binance’s MiCA license application, according to insider sources. Without approval by July 1, 2026, the largest crypto exchange would have to cease all EU operations, as the MiCA transition period ends without extension and ESMA confirmed in April that no deadline extension will be granted. According to some accounts, the ECB pushed for the rejection by signaling that Binance is unwelcome in Europe, likely out of concern for monetary sovereignty and the digital euro. This is not confirmed, and the application was technically considered complete and MiCA-compliant. Competitors such as Coinbase, Kraken, and OKX have long held licenses, while so far only around 17% of former VASP registrations have received MiCA authorization. Binance disputes the report and is now shifting to France.
Greece’s HCMC plans to reject Binance’s MiCA licence. Without approval by 1 July 2026, the exchange faces exclusion from the EU market.
Ethereum prepares largest fork since the Merge
In addition: Ethereum is coordinating its largest hard fork since the September 2022 Merge with the “Glamsterdam” upgrade, with mainnet activation targeted for the third quarter of 2026. The centerpiece is Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation: currently 88% of blocks are produced outside the protocol via MEV-Boost, and EIP-7732 integrates the separation of proposer and builder directly into the protocol, thereby reducing dependence on external relays. Inclusion Lists accompany this by strengthening censorship resistance. EIP-7928 boosts throughput with Block-Level Access Lists for parallel transaction validation, while the gas limit target rises from 60 million to 200 million per block. Projections cite up to 10,000 transactions per second and roughly 71% lower costs for simple ETH transfers, though these rest on theoretical models under optimal conditions. The “Soldøgn” devnet was completed in May 2026, followed by the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets. ETH holders need do nothing, but validators and node operators must update their clients.
The Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade is the biggest hard fork since the Merge: ePBS and parallel processing boost network throughput.
