SBF revives his 2023 media strategy from behind bars, SafeMoon CEO sentenced, Strategy doubles down on Bitcoin: Weekly recap
Sam Bankman-Fried is once again at the center of the crypto news cycle. Even from prison, the former FTX chief appears to be following a familiar and carefully crafted communications playbook, echoing the strategy he pursued during 2023. At the same time, former SafeMoon CEO Braden Karony has been handed a 100‑month prison sentence, underscoring that U.S. authorities are still aggressively prosecuting high‑profile crypto fraud cases. Against this regulatory backdrop, asset manager Strategy has rolled out a new class of perpetual preferred shares, aiming to channel fresh capital into Bitcoin despite sitting on unrealized losses from earlier purchases.
These developments frame a week that also saw new attempts to institutionalize crypto exposure, expansions of retail crypto products in emerging markets, and renewed debates around privacy, scalability, and the future of money on-chain.
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Bankman-Fried leans on a familiar media playbook from prison
Sam Bankman-Fried, once the face of hyper‑growth crypto finance and now a convicted fraudster, appears to be sticking to the same media tactics that defined his 2023 public relations blitz. Then, he sat for marathon interviews, released written statements, and engaged indirectly with journalists, seemingly trying to influence public perception and, by extension, the legal narrative around him.
From prison, a similar pattern is emerging. While his ability to speak publicly is constrained, reports suggest he continues to use intermediaries and controlled communications to shape how his story is told. The core elements of this approach remain intact: leaning into complexity, framing failures as “mistakes” rather than intentional misconduct, and casting himself as a flawed but earnest builder caught in a system-wide breakdown.
For observers, this raises a larger question: how much influence can disgraced founders still exert over public discourse once they are removed from the industry? And does such influence matter for the broader health of crypto markets, or is it merely a media sideshow that distracts from structural reform?
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SafeMoon’s former CEO Braden Karony receives a 100‑month sentence
While Bankman-Fried continues his public‑relations chess game, the judiciary delivered a decisive move in another long‑running case. Braden Karony, former CEO of SafeMoon, has been sentenced to 100 months in prison. SafeMoon, once hyped as a high‑yield token promising outsized returns for early adopters, became a symbol of speculative mania and opaque project governance.
The severity of the sentence sends a clear message: regulators and prosecutors are now willing to treat fraudulent behavior in crypto with penalties comparable to traditional financial crimes. In practical terms, a 100‑month sentence not only punishes Karony but also establishes a reference point for future enforcement actions involving misrepresentation, misappropriation of funds, or deceptive tokenomics.
For investors, the SafeMoon episode reinforces the need for rigorous due diligence. Marketing buzz, meme‑driven virality, and promises of passive yields are no substitute for transparent token structures, audited treasuries, and traceable on‑chain capital flows. The legal outcome may further discourage copycat schemes that rely on underinformed retail participants to sustain unsustainable economics.
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Strategy introduces perpetual preferred shares to keep buying Bitcoin
Institutional Bitcoin accumulation also took center stage this week. Investment firm Strategy has launched a new class of perpetual preferred stock with variable dividends, specifically designed to finance ongoing Bitcoin purchases. This structure gives the company flexibility: it can tap capital markets without diluting common shareholders in the traditional way, while offering preferred investors potential upside tied to the firm’s financial performance.
What is notable is that Strategy is moving ahead with additional Bitcoin buys even as it faces unrealized losses from earlier acquisitions made at higher price points. This signals a long‑term conviction approach: management appears to treat Bitcoin not as a trade, but as a strategic reserve asset whose value will play out over a multi‑year or even multi‑decade horizon.
The use of specialized equity instruments to acquire Bitcoin underscores how far the industry has moved from retail speculation toward corporate balance‑sheet engineering. Whether this strategy ultimately proves prescient or reckless will depend on macro conditions, regulatory clarity, and Bitcoin’s ability to maintain its narrative as “digital gold” in the face of rising competition from other real‑world assets on-chain.
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Strategy keeps buying despite unrealized losses
Strategy’s persistence in accumulating Bitcoin, even in the red, highlights a growing divide between short‑term traders and institutions that operate on a much longer timeline. For many corporate treasuries, volatility is tolerable if they believe that:
1. Bitcoin will remain scarce and censorship‑resistant.
2. Regulatory acceptance will increase over time.
3. On-chain settlement will become a key layer of global finance.
The firm’s approach resembles traditional commodity and gold accumulation strategies: average in, smooth out entry prices, and ignore interim market noise. This patience contrasts sharply with the rapid de‑risking behavior seen among retail traders during drawdowns, and it may gradually reshape how Bitcoin price cycles evolve as institutional ownership deepens.
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Grayscale files to launch an AAVE ETF
In parallel with these corporate maneuvers, the drive to bring DeFi assets into regulated wrappers continued. Grayscale has filed an application for an exchange‑traded fund linked to AAVE, one of the leading decentralized lending protocols. If approved, the product would give traditional investors a way to gain AAVE exposure via brokerage accounts, without directly interacting with permissionless smart contracts.
An AAVE‑linked ETF would have several implications:
– It could increase token liquidity by broadening the investor base.
– It would legitimize DeFi governance tokens as investable assets beyond crypto‑native audiences.
– It might encourage stricter risk management and transparency from protocol ecosystems that suddenly find themselves under the lens of regulators and public‑markets analysts.
However, the filing also reignites long‑standing questions: how do you reconcile the ethos of decentralized governance with the regulatory expectations attached to listed securities? And what happens when a substantial share of governance tokens ends up in the hands of passive ETF holders with no intention of voting?
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Kalshi partners with sports insurance broker to refine risk markets
Beyond price‑tracking instruments, real‑world risk markets are also evolving. Prediction market operator Kalshi has formed a partnership with a sports insurance broker, aiming to refine how sports‑related risks are assessed, priced, and hedged. While not strictly a crypto platform, this collaboration intersects with the same infrastructure and mindset driving decentralized derivatives and event markets.
The logic is clear: sports organizations, sponsors, and broadcasters face quantifiable but uncertain outcomes—player injuries, event cancellations, performance metrics—that traditional insurance often prices inefficiently. By connecting prediction‑style markets with insurance expertise, the industry moves one step closer to more granular, data‑driven hedging instruments.
For crypto innovators, this development offers a template: as on-chain prediction markets mature, they can complement—not just compete with—traditional insurance and reinsurance, enabling more precise risk transfer and new forms of financial engineering around real‑world events.
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Binance rolls out a prepaid card for CIS markets
On the retail front, Binance has taken another step toward making digital assets spendable in everyday life by launching a prepaid card in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) markets. This card allows users to preload value, typically converted from crypto holdings, and then spend it at merchants that accept conventional card payments.
The move is significant for several reasons:
– CIS markets often combine high crypto adoption with incomplete traditional banking penetration.
– Prepaid cards create a bridge between on-chain balances and offline commerce without requiring merchants to handle crypto directly.
– Users gain a familiar spending experience while preserving the option to hold savings in digital assets.
However, such products operate under tightening regulatory scrutiny, especially regarding anti‑money‑laundering obligations and consumer protection standards. How smoothly this card product integrates with local financial systems will be watched closely by both regulators and competing exchanges considering similar offerings.
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South Korean police lose custody of seized Bitcoin
In a more cautionary development, South Korean law enforcement reportedly lost custody of a tranche of seized Bitcoin. While details are still emerging, the incident underscores how critical secure digital asset management has become—not just for private investors and exchanges, but also for state institutions.
Mismanaged custody by public authorities carries several risks:
– It can compromise the integrity of criminal investigations and asset‑forfeiture proceedings.
– It may erode public trust in the state’s ability to oversee digital assets responsibly.
– It highlights the gap between the technical sophistication required for crypto custody and the legacy systems many agencies still rely on.
The episode is a reminder that as governments increasingly seize, hold, and eventually auction digital assets, they will need robust protocols, specialized personnel, and credible third‑party custodians. Failing to invest in this infrastructure risks both financial losses and reputational damage.
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Robinhood debuts a layer‑2 testnet
Trading app Robinhood, long associated with democratizing access to stocks and crypto, is pushing deeper into infrastructure. The firm has launched a testnet for its own layer‑2 network, designed to offer cheaper and faster transactions than the underlying base chain.
A proprietary or branded L2 raises important strategic questions:
– Robinhood gains tighter control over user experience, fees, and feature rollout.
– It can experiment with on-chain settlement of trades, tokenized assets, or loyalty programs.
– It may eventually support native applications that blur the line between brokerage, banking, and DeFi.
Yet building a successful L2 is not trivial. Many so‑called layer‑2s in the market have been criticized for operating more like sidechains or semi‑custodial rails rather than true trust‑minimized extensions of base‑layer security. Robinhood’s technical design, validator set, and approach to censorship resistance will ultimately determine whether its L2 is perceived as a genuine scaling solution or simply a branded payment corridor.
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Hoskinson clarifies the Midnight privacy strategy
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson used the week to further explain the roadmap and philosophy behind Midnight, a privacy‑focused network in the Cardano ecosystem. Privacy has become a contentious topic: regulators increasingly demand traceability to combat illicit finance, while users and developers argue that confidentiality is essential for commercial use cases and civil liberties.
Hoskinson’s clarification aimed to position Midnight as a balanced solution—offering programmable privacy that can support compliance when necessary, rather than blanket anonymity. This suggests tools such as:
– Selective disclosure of transaction details.
– Auditable proofs for regulators or counterparties.
– Configurable privacy levels for enterprises.
If executed well, this model could enable businesses to deploy sensitive workflows—like payrolls, trade secrets, or proprietary trading strategies—on-chain without exposing all details to competitors or the public. The challenge will be maintaining enough transparency to satisfy regulators while preserving genuine privacy guarantees at the protocol level.
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BitMine quietly builds an Ethereum position
While Bitcoin continues to dominate headlines, Ethereum remains the backbone of much of the on-chain economy. Mining and infrastructure firm BitMine has continued to accumulate Ethereum, signaling long‑term confidence in the network’s role in DeFi, tokenization, and application deployment.
Post‑merge, Ethereum no longer relies on proof‑of‑work mining, but companies like BitMine can still build strategic positions through staking, infrastructure services, or secondary market purchases. Their accumulation strategy reflects several convictions:
– Ethereum will remain the default settlement layer for a large share of tokenized assets.
– Layer‑2 ecosystems anchored to Ethereum will drive fees and activity back to the base chain.
– Staking yields, while not risk‑free, can provide a quasi‑bond‑like income stream if the network’s security and demand hold.
This institutional interest in ETH complements the Bitcoin‑centric approach of firms like Strategy, highlighting a broader trend: diversified exposure across multiple cornerstone protocols, rather than a binary bet on a single chain.
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The hidden infrastructure crisis: finance, tokenization, and on-chain money
Threaded through many of this week’s stories is a deeper structural issue: legacy financial infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the speed, granularity, and programmability that modern markets demand. Long settlement times, fragmented ledgers, and opaque intermediaries continue to plague mortgage finance, real estate, and regional banking.
Tokenization offers a potential escape valve. By representing assets—mortgages, property titles, deposits, treasuries—directly on-chain, markets could gain:
– Real‑time settlement and reconciliation.
– Programmable cash flows (for example, automated mortgage servicing).
– Transparent risk profiles visible to both regulators and investors.
Opinion leaders have argued that regional banks, in particular, must start partnering with crypto‑native startups to capture stablecoin and tokenization revenues before global giants monopolize the field. The choice is stark: adapt and tap new income streams, or watch deposits and transaction volumes migrate to nimbler, on-chain alternatives.
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Why many “Bitcoin L2s” keep failing—and what comes next
Another recurring theme is the difficulty of scaling Bitcoin and other base layers with credible second‑layer solutions. Many products marketed as “Bitcoin L2s” fall short of the strict technical definition of a layer‑2: they often rely on custodial models, centralized operators, or security assumptions that diverge significantly from the base chain.
This mismatch has led to a string of disappointing launches and user confusion. For scaling solutions to succeed in the long run, they need to:
– Inherit security from the underlying chain rather than rebuild it from scratch.
– Provide transparent exit paths for users even if operators fail or misbehave.
– Align economic incentives so that both operators and users benefit from honest behavior.
As experimentation continues—through rollups, state channels, and sidechains—the market is gradually distinguishing between marketing labels and genuine, robust L2 architectures. Investors and users who understand these distinctions will be better positioned to evaluate risk.
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Crypto does not need chaos to thrive
Looking across this week’s headlines—from criminal sentencing and lost government Bitcoin to ambitious new financial products—one conclusion stands out: crypto no longer depends on chaos, crises, or speculative bubbles to justify its existence. The narrative is maturing.
Sovereign digital currency strategies, stablecoins, CBDCs, tokenized treasuries, and corporate Bitcoin reserves are converging into a broader thesis: money and value transfer are moving on-chain, whether through private rails, public networks, or some hybrid form. Nations that harmonize their stablecoin and CBDC frameworks could gain a strategic edge in global finance. Firms that learn to operate with programmable money and tokenized assets will likely outpace those that cling to manual, paper‑heavy processes.
At the same time, institutional investors are increasingly warned not to blindly copy the retail “moonshot” playbook. For them, success in crypto will come from disciplined risk management, careful infrastructure selection, and a sober appreciation of regulatory realities—not from chasing the latest meme or narrative spike.
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The road ahead: consolidation, professionalism, and on-chain money in 2026
Taken together, the week’s events capture a sector at an inflection point. On one side stand the remnants of the last cycle’s excesses: failed projects, criminal convictions, and public figures attempting to rehabilitate their images from prison. On the other side, a more professional, infrastructure‑driven ecosystem is taking shape: regulated ETFs for DeFi tokens, structured equity for Bitcoin treasuries, enterprise‑grade privacy solutions, and real‑world risk markets blending on-chain and off‑chain expertise.
As 2026 unfolds, the central storyline is becoming clearer. Money is going on-chain—sometimes through open networks, sometimes through closed or permissioned rails—but the direction of travel is unmistakable. The winners will be those who can navigate this transition with rigor: understanding both the opportunities in tokenization, stablecoins, and digital assets, and the hard lessons from cases like SafeMoon and FTX.
The era when crypto could thrive purely on hype is ending. What replaces it is slower, more complex, and far more consequential: the rebuilding of financial infrastructure, one protocol, product, and partnership at a time.