Crypto-Traditional Convergence Accelerates (2026-06-09)

Starknet rolls out ZK privacy layer for ERC20 balances and transfers

Starknet has launched a new zero-knowledge privacy framework that it says is designed to enable shielded balances and private transfers for any ERC20 asset on its network, while incorporating disclosure mechanisms intended to support regulatory and compliance requirements.

The framework, known as STRK20, allows developers to add private transaction flows without building a separate privacy stack. It can scan support transfers, swaps, lending, staking, payments, and donations, while viewing keys allow only information responsive to legally binding requests to be disclosed, according to a statement shared with The Block.

The Starknet team said the framework is not a mixer. Mixing typically sends assets to a separate destination to obscure transaction history, whereas STRK20 embeds shielding directly into the asset flow. Privacy operates as a native mode of activity rather than a specialist detour, they noted.

“This is practical privacy in the truest sense,” Damian Chen, VP of Growth at the Starknet Foundation, said. “It enables users, builders, and institutions to maintain confidentiality from the public while preserving compliance-ready disclosure paths when required by law.”

The strkBTC launch gave STRK20 its first major use case, bringing shielded balances and private transfers to bitcoin activity on Starknet, per the statement.

Rather than treating privacy as a separate destination, strkBTC uses STRK20 to make shielding part of the asset experience itself, allowing bitcoin to move between public and private modes through supported Starknet wallets and applications.

Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, predicted that ZK-powered privacy solutions like STRK20 will lead to more pinpointed regulatory actions over time. He said current investigations into privacy infrastructure can affect large numbers of wallets and argued that advances in ZK technology could allow future investigations to target specific information with less collateral impact.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

[The Block]

BlackRock deposited nearly 4,000 Bitcoin into Coinbase

PANews, June 9th news, according to Onchain Lens, BlackRock deposited 3,966 Bitcoin into Coinbase, valued at approximately $244 million.

[Onchain Lens]

OKX adds Magnificent 7 stocks and commodities to European X Perps offering

OKX has expanded its X-Perps offering in Europe with 13 new markets, adding futures linked to major U.S. technology stocks, commodities, and stock indices after reporting a 447% rise in X-Perps trading volume since May 1. Retail users across Europe can now trade perpetual futures tied to Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, alongside Gold, Silver, WTI Crude Oil and Brent Crude Oil.

The exchange has also introduced SPY and QQQ X-Perps, providing price exposure to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 through a regulated platform available to European customers. Stock, ETF, and commodity X-Perps are now live in Europe. Trade futures on Mag 7, $SPY, $QQQ, Gold, Silver, and Oil 24/7 with up to 10x leverage. SpaceX joins the lineup once it IPOs. Open your X-Perps account today and get a €30 bonus.

Set to expand further, the product lineup will include a SpaceX-linked X-Perp on June 12 following the company’s IPO, according to the exchange. All contracts are available around the clock and support leverage of up to 10x.

Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, said European investors closely follow earnings reports, central bank decisions, commodity prices and geopolitical developments but have lacked practical ways to react immediately through a single platform. “X-Perps fix that. One account, every market, 24/7. And because we’re fully regulated, our customers get the protections that come with that,” Ghoos said.

Unlike traditional brokerage products that operate within market hours, the contracts allow users to maintain capital on one platform and move between crypto and traditional asset exposure without opening separate accounts, according to the company. Recent trading activity suggests growing interest in the product category. Ghoos stated that X-Perps trading volume has increased by more than 447% since May 1, adding that the company expects demand to continue as additional markets are introduced.

OKX noted that SPY has returned 25% over the past 12 months while QQQ has gained 42% during the same period. The exchange also pointed to the size difference between investment vehicles tracking those indices, stating that the largest European ETF manages roughly $20 billion in assets while SPY holds about $700 billion.

For European retail investors, access to U.S.-linked index exposure has often been limited by regulatory requirements. According to the company, X-Perps provide access through a platform operating under both MiCA and MiFID II authorizations. Regulatory compliance has become increasingly important as the European Union’s MiCA transition period approaches its July 1, 2026 deadline. Once the transition period ends, exchanges without the required licenses will no longer be permitted to offer crypto services across the European Economic Area.

The launch arrives during a period of expansion for the exchange beyond its core trading business. In May, OKX Ventures agreed to acquire a 19.6% stake in South Korean exchange Coinone through an 80 billion won ($53 million) investment, a transaction that the companies said would strengthen cooperation on security systems, risk management and user protection. A month earlier, the company introduced its Agent Payments Protocol, an open framework designed to allow AI agents to manage commercial activities such as payments, settlements, escrow and dispute handling across multiple blockchains. OKX said the protocol was developed to support AI-driven commerce and builds on its existing blockchain infrastructure. Those developments, alongside the latest X-Perps rollout, add to the company’s efforts to expand regulated products and infrastructure services across multiple markets.

[crypto.news]

Bybit launches perpetual futures for QNTX, AAOI, ONDS, and IREN.

Bybit has added four perpetual contracts today: Quantinuum (QNTXUSDT), Applied Optoelectronics (AAOIUSDT), Ondas Holdings (ONDSUSDT), and IREN (IRENUSDT), covering four major technology sectors: quantum computing, fiber optic communications, drones, and AI computing power data centers.

During the same period of launch, Bybit is offering a limited-time promotion of 0% maker fee and 50% off taker fees.

[Foresight News]

The address “0x97f8” significantly shorted S&P 500 futures on-chain, with a notional size exceeding $110.00 million

On June 9th, a wallet address “0x97f8” opened a short position on S&P 500 related contracts xyz:SP500 today on-chain, using 50x leverage to short 15,001 contracts, with a notional value of approximately $111.6 million.

The current liquidation price for this position is 8294.9 points, with only about a 9% buffer from the current S&P 500 level of approximately 7600 points. This means the account faces a high risk of liquidation if the index continues to rise in this high-leverage environment.

[Lookonchain]

Bitget CandyBomb: Trade BTC and ETH to unlock 31,500 WLD

Bitget has launched a new round of CandyBomb, with a total prize pool of 31,500 WLD tokens. This campaign is exclusively for new contract trading users on Bitget: complete the specified net deposit and contract trading tasks to earn up to 315 WLD per user.

Detailed rules have been published on Bitget’s official platform; eligible users must register before participating in the campaign. The campaign ends on June 19 at 18:00 (UTC+8).

[Odaily]

A whale shorted the S&P 500 with 50x leverage, with a position size of $112.00 million.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, whale “0x97f8” opened a high-leverage short position on the S&P 500 index (SP500) approximately 5 hours ago. The 50x leverage nominal position size has reached approximately 111.6 million USD.

Analysts believe that the current market is closely watching U.S. economic data, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path, and the trend of risk assets. Against this backdrop, such a large-scale, high-leverage short-selling operation has attracted market attention, reflecting a cautious or even bearish attitude from some investors toward the future market.

[Odaily Planet Daily]

Humanity releases incident update: Approximately $36 million has been stolen and dumped across both chains.

Humanity released an incident update stating that its H token was subjected to a coordinated attack on the evening of June 8th on Ethereum and BSC, with approximately $36.00 million stolen and sold off across both chains combined.

The project disclosed that the attack originated from a compromised employee laptop, leading to the leakage of multiple owner keys for the Gnosis Safe that controls the Hyperlane bridge ProxyAdmin.

On the Ethereum side, the attacker gained control of the ProxyAdmin and upgraded the contract to a malicious implementation, transferring out approximately 141.20 million H in a single transaction. On the BSC side, after also gaining control of the ProxyAdmin, a malicious implementation with infinite minting functionality was deployed, minting 200.00 million H in two transactions and continuously selling them off.

[PANews]

Circle Debuts CirBTC on Ethereum to Challenge Coinbase in the Wrapped Bitcoin Market

Circle Internet’s (CRCL) wrapped version of bitcoin (BTC), cirBTC, is live on Ethereum as the company best known for its dollar-pegged stablecoin takes on Coinbase (COIN) for dominance of the synthetic BTC market.

The New York-based firm said it developed cirBTC, a token backed 1:1 by the world’s largest cryptocurrency, to allow traders to access their bitcoin wealth in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, including lending, decentralized exchange (DEXs), tokenized assets and stablecoins.

Synthetic, or wrapped, bitcoin tokens exist to address the historical lack of provision for DeFi activities on the Bitcoin network. Many cryptocurrency users prefer to hold only bitcoin because it is worth more than every other crypto combined. But using it for DeFi is challenging because that Bitcoin lacks the native programmability of networks like Ethereum.

The first token to cross the divide, wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), was introduced in 2019 and remains the largest, with a market cap of around $7.3 billion. Coinbase’s (COIN) cbBTC, which appeared in 2024, sits at just under $5.4 billion.

Circle is pitching cirBTC to institutions that may focus their crypto allocation on BTC and are familiar with the company and trust its infrastructure due to its visibility in the stablecoin market. Circle’s USDC is the second-largest stablecoin on the market with a cap of over $75 billion.

The introduction of cirBTC could see Circle going head to head with Coinbase and wBTC’s primary custodian, BitGo Holdings (BTGO), for dominance of the institutional synthetic BTC market.

The market cap of all synthetic bitcoin tokens combined hovers between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion, representing about 1% of bitcoin’s total value of around $1.25 trillion.

The top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies collectively hold 1,258,090 BTC.

Bitcoin News posted on X, stating that the top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies currently hold a combined total of 1,258,090 BTC.

[Odaily]

Reuters: Trump has earned at least $2.3 billion through cryptocurrency since taking office.

According to a Reuters investigation, the Trump family has profited at least $2.3 billion from cryptocurrencies since Trump took office. In contrast, over one million investors have collectively lost $2.3 billion.

These investors include retail buyers of cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency-related stocks, as well as those who invested indirectly through funds holding Trump’s cryptocurrencies, such as ETFs. The total loss includes unrealized losses on unsold investments.

Reuters stated that its analysis of Trump’s cryptocurrency earnings and investor losses is based on blockchain records, thousands of pages of company filings, public statements by Trump and executives of his projects, and interviews with cryptocurrency industry executives. More than a dozen accounting and cryptocurrency experts reviewed the findings and agreed that Reuters’ estimates and its analysis of Trump’s business were reasonable.

[Foresight News]