Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, will suspend services for European Union customers on July 1 after failing to secure a license under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation before the deadline, telling users in France, Italy, Spain, and Poland how to withdraw funds. The exchange withdrew its MiCA application in Greece on Wednesday, filed in January 2026, with no formal decision ever issued and plans to seek authorization in another member state, likely France, though approval is expected only after the deadline. Under MiCA, a single license passports across all 27 states and unlicensed firms must wind down, yet only about 210 of more than 3,000 firms cleared authorization (roughly 7%), with Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Crypto.com licensed months ago. Binance said customer assets remain safe and accessible and that it is not asking users to remove funds before the deadline.

Roughly $10.6 billion in quarterly Bitcoin options expire Friday, one of the year's largest settlements, concentrated on Deribit and CME, but nearly 80% of the contracts are out of the money after June's decline, with about $8.6 billion of open interest below current prices and max pain near $74,000, well above a spot price hovering around $60,000, meaning the settlement may strip out selling pressure rather than add to it. The expiry lands mid-selloff: Bitcoin touched its lowest level since September 2024 before rebounding to about $59,770, with another $1 billion in futures positions wiped out.

Kraken, through parent company Payward, is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave Group at a $385 million valuation, investing 35,000 ETH in return for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake, a package valued at roughly $71 million that Kraken also plans to partly syndicate. The deal follows Aave's recovery from April's exploit, which left the protocol with significant bad debt and triggered billions in withdrawals even though its own smart contracts were never compromised. Over $8 billion exited Aave in the weeks after the exploit, against an estimated $190 million to $230 million in resulting bad debt. Aave founder Stani Kulechov has publicly dismissed the $385 million figure as a steep discount, noting the protocol generates $134 million in annualized revenue that flows to the Aave DAO. Neither company confirmed the talks.

Progress continues on the ZK Proving Marketplace, a side project running alongside the core ZK provability work. The team is aiming to put a demo on testnet for the community to try in the relatively near future, with timing still to be determined. Anyone who wants to be among the first to test it should make sure they're in the beta testers channel on Discord.

Work is underway to extend veHEMI into an economic collateral system, which feeds directly into Hemi Earn. On the rewards side, veHEMI distributions are being prepared now and are expected to go out in the next week or two.

A small update to the hBitVM white paper is coming later this week. The changes are minor; a couple of fixes and some clarified language to make it easier to follow, and the material substance is unchanged. Anyone who has already read the original version won't find anything new, just a cleaner read.

On the latest Built on Hemi, Johnny Bieniek, Head of Business Development at Accountable, joined the show to talk through the work behind hemiBTC's live proof-of-solvency dashboard at por.hemi.xyz.

Watch the full talk.

While serving as a vibrant hub for the community, Hemi’s Discord is also where you can earn from a $HEMI prize pool by competing in onchain games.

Season 4 Results Coming Soon

The Hemi community hit the track and now the team is tallying up the results.

Prize pool:

Winners will be announced soon.

Join Hemi’s Discord for your chance to win and become part of Hemi’s growing community.

Hemi Engineers answered community questions on op-reth, a Rust-based execution client Hemi is migrating to from op-geth.

See the full AMA.

Midweek with Max covers ongoing engineering, community, and marketing updates.

Catch the full recap.

Join Hemi’s Discord to send questions for Max ahead of next week’s AMA.

To become more widely accessible, starting next week, Protocol Engineering Office Hours are shifting from Discord to streaming on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, to be held every Wednesday at 8:00 AM PDT, 11:00 AM EDT, and 15:00 UTC.