Your Weekly Deep Dive into The World of Crypto

July 29, 2026 · 5 Min Read

GM, Readers!

This week traded diplomacy, not fundamentals. The US and Iran paused strikes on Sunday, Brent crude dropped 7% to $87, Ethereum ripped 4.4%, DEXE fell 96% from its ATH, and BitMart announced it was shutting down.

The Fed decides today at 2:00 PM ET. Polymarket says hold. Warsh's press conference at 2:30 says whatever Warsh wants it to.

Let’s get into it...

The AI governance token DEXE printed an ATH of $48.89 on July 13 after a four-day short squeeze off its listing. Eight days later, wallets that analyst morsyxbt linked to the DEXE team sent 625,000 DEXE (about $6.2M) to Binance. The token crashed 85% in hours.

Whale Intel: Website up, DAO functioning. But when concentrated wallets hit an exchange right after an 18x parabola, the 'rug pull vs pump and dump' label is mostly legal semantics for the people who bought the top. 

MVMT Labs, the company behind the Movement blockchain, filed for Chapter 11 on July 15, listing assets of $100K-$500K against liabilities of $1-$10M. MOVE traded at $0.010 (July 21). Co-founder Rushi Manche is the largest creditor, with $1.6M according to multiple sources.

The wreckage traces back to a 2024 market-making deal that handed a shadowy intermediary called Rentech 66M MOVE tokens (about 5% of publicly tradeable supply) at launch, which then dumped into thin liquidity.

BitMart announced on Sunday, July 26 that it is winding down operations, becoming the third mid-tier exchange to exit in weeks after AscendEX and BitMEX. Every bear cycle ends with a graveyard of thinly-capitalised venues.

Translation: If you have anything on a smaller exchange, move it to a wallet you control. Not your keys, not your coins.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that Robinhood is in talks with Crypto.com to add its yes-or-no event contracts. Robinhood reported more than 12 billion event contracts traded in 2025, with volumes continuing to grow strongly in 2026 (8.8 billion in Q1 alone).

Bernstein estimates prediction markets are on pace to overtake crypto revenue at Robinhood.

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Third green week in a row for both funds. US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $33.79M for the week ending July 24, saved by early-week inflows before a $240.08M Friday outflow snapped a seven-day streak (SoSoValue). Ethereum ETFs added $103.90M, out-pulling Bitcoin products for a second straight week. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for nearly $415M (July 23-24) of the late-week outflow.

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TurtleDex pitched itself as a decentralized storage platform on BSC. On February 21, 2021, TechRate audited the smart contract and flagged no critical issues. On March 15, the presale raised 9,000 BNB (about $2.5M) within hours.

On March 18, the team pulled all liquidity from PancakeSwap and ApeSwap, converted the take to ETH through Binance hot wallets, and deleted every social account. TTDX went to near zero. Recovery: zero.

Colin Wu, founder of crypto news media Wu Blockchain, unearthed a pre-launch chat where the admin joked, "Why do turtles not rugpull? because hands are too short". They could reach the keyboard just fine. 😏

Whale Intel: A smart-contract audit checks the code, not the humans. If the team can pull liquidity, the audit is a receipt.

Johann Steynberg founded MTI in South Africa in May 2018 and promised its customers 10% monthly returns from an AI trading bot. The bot was fiction. Steynberg embezzled over 29,421 BTC (valued over $1.73 billion) from customers across the U.S. and around the world.

In December 2020, Steynberg travelled to Brazil with forged documents and went silent. MTI collapsed within weeks. Brazilian police arrested him in December 2021 on forged identity charges.

On April 24, 2023, a US federal court ordered Steynberg to pay $1,733,838,372 in restitution plus a $1,733,838,372 civil monetary penalty (total $3.47 billion). It is the largest CFTC monetary penalty in history and the largest Bitcoin fraud case the agency has ever charged. Around 23,000 US citizens were among the victims.

👉 Read the Official CFTC Press Release: Here.

Polymarket traders assign a 79% probability that the Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged at today's July FOMC meeting, per Polymarket's July 28 update. The policy decision is due at 2:00 PM ET.

Markets are pricing a 95% probability that the Fed will have raised rates by its September meeting, underscoring that policy stays restrictive even if July holds steady.

Polymarket traders assign a 63% probability (July 28) that the S&P 500 opens lower, reflecting cautious sentiment ahead of this week's Fed decision and major earnings releases.

Fed decision hits today at 2:00 PM ET, Warsh at 2:30. Coinbase and Robinhood report earnings. Q2 GDP prints Thursday. Iran de-escalation is fragile: a single Strait of Hormuz headline undoes the risk-on tape. If this is the alt-season signal ETH/BTC bulls have been waiting for, expect memecoins to try their luck first.