Autor Cointelegraph By Martin Young

AI-enabled microbusinesses could provide a major boost for stablecoin transaction volumes as the global gig and freelance payment market grows, according to Australian crypto exchange Swyftx. In a second-quarter industry report, Swyftx estimated the global gig and freelance payments market could reach $2.1 trillion by 2033, with AI-native workers accounting for $775 billion. Swyftx’s base-case model projected that $262 billion of the AI-native cohort’s payment volume could be settled in stablecoins, based on an assumed adoption rate of roughly 33%. “We see the vibe-coding and AI economy as a significant potential tailwind for stablecoin use,” Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at Swyftx, told Cointelegraph.“Adoption doesn’t happen just because the technology exists. It happens when the economics are compelling, and the rules are clear. For stablecoins, both of those conditions are now falling into place.”Stablecoins, which have doubled in market cap over the past two years and hit a record $1.79 trillion in volume in June, have been a clear indicator of payment utility demand. Freelancers are driving the growth Swyftx said that the very smallest firms, those with fewer than five employees, are now among the fastest-moving in AI adoption, and the shift from larger company adoption has produced a new class of solo entrepreneurs. These solo workers operate across borders, invoice frequently and settle in amounts that the conventional banking system and payment infrastructure were not optimized to handle, it said. They number between six and 10 million globally today but are projected to grow to 17 million over the next decade.“A lot of these solo founders are going to be sensitive to remittance and transaction fees. It’s a potentially chunky market for stablecoins,” Hundal said. Using stablecoins can save thousands of dollars in annual transfer fees. Source: Swyftx Swyftx added that if its projections played out, “the institutional settlement layer beneath this — over-the-counter liquidity, custody and yield services for the platforms routing these payments — could capture a significant new revenue stream.”Related: Stablecoin transaction volume hits record $1.79T in JuneThis theoretical revenue stream could be as much as $1.3 billion by 2033, assuming total transaction, liquidity and custody costs of 0.5%, it added.Traditional methods too slow and expensiveTraditional cross-border rails charge high fees, have multiday settlement windows and exclude users in more than 50 countries.Stablecoin transfers using Ethereum layer-2 networks can cut those fees by 80% to 90%, saving the average freelancer about 86% per year in transfer fees, Swyftx said in an example.The agentic AI payment narrative could be another big driver of stablecoin volume, as AI agents cannot get bank accounts, so they will likely use crypto assets for payments.Features: Robinhood L2 sparks ETH optimism, Saylor ‘muddies waters.’ Hodler’s Digest

Thailand’s central bank is stepping up stablecoin surveillance in an effort to crack down on money laundering, illicit finance and “gray money” in the country.The Bank of Thailand is working with the Kingdom’s Securities and Exchange Commission to audit high-volume stablecoin transactions, with a focus on USDt (USDT), cash transactions and currency exchanges, to identify and stop illicit financial flows.“The measures we are implementing are not short-term fixes; they require the continuous deployment of multiple parallel strategies,” Bank of Thailand Governor Vitai Ratanakorn said, according to local media outlet The Nation on Saturday.Thailand is targeting the “gray economy,” which largely consists of cash that may have come from suspicious origins, such as scam call centers that have proliferated in the region. While there are no reliable figures for the gray economy, scam losses were 115 billion THB ($3.4 billion) in 2025, with around 173 million scam calls and texts recorded. Stablecoins have become a popular method of transferring large amounts due to near-instant cross-border settlement. Cash, forex and gold trading targetedThe move will expand commercial bank compliance duties across cash networks, currency exchanges, gold bullion trading and “suspicious stablecoin transactions” in an effort to prevent regulated entities from facilitating corruption or shadow economies, it reported.High-value cash transactions will also require a source-of-funds declaration, and exchanges of large volumes of big banknotes for smaller denominations without a clear business reason will also be monitored. Cash deposits of more than 5 million baht ($150,000) also require full disclosure. Related: Thailand crypto platforms freeze 10K accounts in AML crackdown: ReportThailand has often been touted as a crypto haven, but digital asset and stablecoin payments are still outlawed by the central bank and there has been regular rule tightening on crypto businesses. Crypto trading remains legal, with the country’s largest exchange, Bitkub, seeing about $26 million in daily volume. However, almost 40% of that is forex, with the USDT/THB pair being the most popular, according to CoinGecko. Scammer crackdown gone wrongThailand’s banks imposed sweeping account restrictions and froze three million bank accounts in 2025 as part of its crackdown on mule accounts, gray capital and suspicious activity.However, thousands of individuals and legitimate businesses were caught in the dragnet in what media reports described at the time as a “scammer crackdown gone wrong.” Features: Robinhood L2 sparks ETH optimism, Saylor ‘muddies waters.’ Hodler’s Digest

The amount of Ether bridged to Robinhood’s new layer-2 blockchain exceeded $70 million in just the first week, according to Token Terminal. Robinhood Chain, an EVM-compatible Arbitrum-based layer-2 network that uses ETH as its native gas token, launched on July 1 with the company describing it as “AI-native and purpose-built for real-world assets.” “If adoption continues, the chain could become a meaningful new source of demand for ETH,” said Token Terminal on Thursday. Robinhood has also offered tokenized stocks to customers in more than 120 countries, responding to a surging demand for tokenized US equities. Ethereum and its layer-2 scaling networks have been a popular choice for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) with more than 50% market share, according to RWA.xyz, and this move could cement that position even further. Turning liquidity into economic activity“Robinhood Chain is rapidly turning liquidity into economic activity,” said Token Terminal in a separate post on X. Robinhood Chain’s daily active users reached 194,000 while daily revenue has grown to $39,000, equivalent to a $14 million annualized revenue run rate, within the chain’s first week, it said. DefiLlama, a decentralized finance data platform, shows similar figures, showing Robinhood Chain has a total value locked of 46,748 ETH, worth around $83 million at current market prices. Thursday’s inflows alone totaled 31,855 ETH, or around $55 million.  Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said Friday that most of what is happening on the Robinhood Chain is ETH-denominated. “It’s the base pair for trading, the highest volume asset, and the gas token to pay for blockspace. It also burns ETH on L1 to pay data storage fees,” he added. ETH bridged to Robinhood Chain tops $70 million. Source: Token Terminal Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that it was “strongly bullish” and early volume “validates the L2 flywheel,” as a “meaningful new demand sink.”“By using ETH as the native gas token on this high-velocity Arbitrum L2, every transaction I track creates direct, recurring demand while locking capital and onboarding Robinhood’s massive user base.” Related: L1s face decentralization ‘tug-of-war’ as adoption grows: Injective CEOTim Sun, HashKey Group senior researcher, said it was “a clear, structural positive for ETH.”“For Ethereum, the most direct benefit is that Robinhood Chain uses ETH for gas,” he said. “As bridged assets, wallet addresses, and on-chain transactions grow, new demand for ETH is generated.”“However, the deeper significance lies not just in how much gas is consumed, but in Robinhood’s choice to build its own on-chain financial ecosystem within the Ethereum network. This further solidifies the Ethereum mainnet’s position as the ultimate settlement layer and liquidity foundation for tokenized assets.”Bulls argue Ethereum’s long-term growth thesis comes from RWA tokenization, agentic AI payments, institutional adoption and network upgrades, such as Glamsterdam, expected before the end of 2026, which is expected to increase layer 1 capacity. ETH prices ticked up on Friday to reach $1,775 but remain at multi-year bear market lows, down 64% from their August 2025 peak. Features: The biggest blockchain upgrades still to come in 2026

Hackers compromised a widely used Injective software package in a supply chain attack with malware designed to steal crypto wallet private keys, adding to a growing attack vector involving attackers using legitimate platforms to deliver malicious payloads. Security firm Socket discovered on Thursday that a popular npm (node package manager) package with around 50,000 weekly downloads used for building on the Injective blockchain was maliciously modified to steal wallet private keys and seed phrases.The large number of downloads makes the incident “significant for developers and applications that handle Injective wallet workflows,” Socket researchers said. The malicious code has since been removed.The software supply chain attack is a relatively new attack vector in which hackers don’t target a blockchain’s cryptography or smart contracts directly, but instead compromise trusted developer tools used to build wallets, exchanges and apps.Injective is an interoperable layer 1 designed for DeFi applications. Its usage has dwindled over the past two years, with total value locked shrinking by 88% to current levels of $8.2 million from its $71 million peak in mid-2024, according to DefiLlama. Secretly copying private keys and phrasesVersion 1.20.21 of the @injectivelabs/sdk-ts npm package was modified through a compromised developer GitHub account, with suspicious commits beginning June 8. It was also pinned across 17 other packages in the Injective Labs npm scope, “exposing users who may not have installed the SDK [software development kit] directly,” Socket said.“The malicious release hooks wallet key-derivation functions, records private keys and mnemonics, and exfiltrates them through fake telemetry,” Socket explained. The malicious code hooked into normal functions used to generate wallet keys, and whenever a developer’s app used these functions, it secretly copied the seed phrase or private key. The compromised data was then encoded and sent to a web address that looked like a legitimate Injective network server.“Any keys or mnemonics passed through affected packages should be treated as compromised,” Socket added. Related: ‘TrapDoor’ malware targets crypto dev tools in supply chain attackSocket reported that the developer whose account was infiltrated quickly detected the compromise, but the malware had been downloaded more than 300 times, and “the campaign itself isn’t yet fully contained.”Injective CEO Eric Chen said, “it’s already fixed, and the affected versions on npm are already deprecated.” No funds on the network are at risk, he added, and Socket did not specify whether any funds were stolen in the incident. The compromised npm package was downloaded 310 times. Source: SocketWallet compromises most costly this yearThe Security Alliance (SEAL) said in its second-quarter threat report that attackers are increasingly using legitimate platforms like GitHub, npm and Google to deliver payloads.“In some cases, compromised systems are being used to push malicious code directly into a company’s own GitHub repositories, turning a single compromise into a distribution channel for the next one.”SEAL added that the malware itself has also gotten more comprehensive, “with cross-platform payloads, including a rise in macOS-specific campaigns, that combine infostealers, RATs (remote access trojans) and backdoor capabilities in a single package.”A similar supply chain attack hit Axios npm releases in March, while a malware campaign called TrapDoor was discovered in May targeting crypto, DeFi, AI and security developers.GitHub itself was exploited on May 20 when it reported unauthorized access to its internal repositories following the compromise of an employee’s device. Wallet compromises were the most costly attack vector in the first half of 2026, with $444 million stolen across 33 incidents, CertiK reported Monday. Features: Bitcoin’s quantum dilemma: Bigger blocks or STARK proofs?

A crypto user lost nearly $1 million on Wednesday after signing a phishing token approval on Ethereum, according to onchain data. It comes as the industry recorded $366 million in phishing losses in the first half of the year. A Scam Sniffer alert on Thursday revealed a victim lost 999,999 USDt (USDT) to an Ethereum phishing token approval scam. Scammers first tried draining a rounded $1 million via multicalls but failed due to insufficient funds, then succeeded seconds later by pulling the exact remaining balance in follow-up transfers.“The script recalculated and pulled the exact remaining balance,” Scam Sniffer said.Social engineering via phishing token approvals has become a common crypto scam tactic. Phishing losses totaled $723 million across 248 incidents in 2025, according to CertiK. Scammers trick a victim into giving a malicious actor access to their wallet, taking the form of an innocuous-seeming transaction. The victim falsely believes that clicking “approve” will only initiate a minor task, but malicious links give the attacker approval to drain funds from the wallet. Attackers extracted $999,999 in three transactions. Source: Etherscan Scammers reuse the same walletsEarlier this month, a wallet holder reportedly lost $1.65 million after connecting to a fake exchange and signing a malicious contract in a similar incident.“The approval gave attackers unlimited access, enabling an automated sweeper to drain funds,” researcher Ryan Coleman said on Friday. Related: France to strengthen response as crypto wrench attacks hit 77 Blockchain security firm Chainalysis reported in June that onchain scams pulled in at least $14 billion in 2025. Investment scams remained the dominant category, and approval phishing is how some of them play out onchain, said Chainalysis.  “Scammers reuse the same wallets, legitimate approval features from contracts, and cash-out routes across victims, which means each report exposes a wider network,” said Renato Bastos, a senior investigator at Chainalysis. Scam Sniffer advised crypto users to double-check all signature requests before approving, avoid rushed transactions and use tools such as scam detection extensions.Address poisoning remains a threat Address poisoning is another attack vector that scammers use alongside phishing token approvals. Scammers create addresses very similar to their target wallets and send a tiny amount of “dust” funds to the address, so the user mistakenly sends to this address instead of the legitimate one. Popular Ethereum wallet MetaMask launched live address poisoning detection in June, a tool that compares each pasted address with addresses that the wallet has previously interacted with.Features: The biggest blockchain upgrades still to come in 2026