Bybit Faces Singapore MAS Alert as Kalshi Hits $2B Revenue, AI Cuts 126,510 US Jobs

Crypto News

Singapore's Monetary Authority added Bybit, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges and a major venue for Bitcoin and altcoin trading, to its Investor Alert List on June 17, flagging that the platform holds no license to provide financial services in the city-state. Bybit responded on X a day later, saying it is in active dialogue with the regulator and stressing it does not currently serve Singapore users, having already blocked local IP addresses. The exchange, founded in 2018 and now headquartered in Dubai, reports over 85 million users globally and more than $20 billion in average daily volume. It already faces operating restrictions in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the United States.

Regulated prediction-market leader Kalshi has crossed $2 billion in annualized revenue, roughly tripling its November figure as traders flooded in to bet on NBA games and the 2026 World Cup. The company is reportedly in early, informal IPO discussions, though it insists it is well-funded and in no rush to file. In May, Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, double its $11 billion mark five months earlier, while annualized trading volume jumped from $52 billion to $178 billion and institutional activity surged 800%. CFTC oversight remains its core selling point against on-chain rival Polymarket, which together pushed May prediction-market volume to a record $31.2 billion.

A nonprofit tracking artificial intelligence's labor impact reports that more than 126,510 US jobs had been displaced or eliminated by AI adoption as of June 10, drawing on 49 reports across 16 industries. That marks an increase of nearly 30,000 since March, accelerating public anxiety: a February survey found four in ten American adults expect AI to harm society over the next two decades. The group's chief executive warned that concentrating AI-generated wealth among a small technocratic elite threatens social stability, while Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation that would place 50% public ownership over critical US AI firms through a proposed sovereign wealth fund.

Anthropic is working to reverse US export restrictions on its most advanced models, Fable and Mythos, submitting a proposal to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that pledges closer cooperation with the White House and faster resolution of safety concerns. The curbs followed a warning that researchers had found ways to bypass the models' safety guardrails, raising fears the systems could reach military intelligence units in China or Russia. Negotiations, led by co-founder and chief compute officer Tom Brown and policy head Sarah Heck, are said to be progressing, though no firm timeline exists. Until lifted, the restrictions effectively sideline the company's two strongest products from international markets.

Elon Musk weighed in on X this week, estimating that Chinese large language models could match Anthropic's Fable benchmark by the first quarter of 2027, a key reference point in the race to build systems that power everything from coding assistants to an AI trading bot. Zhipu AI founder Tang Jie pushed back, suggesting it would take less time. Musk qualified that benchmark parity differs from real-world usefulness, arguing Anthropic's focus on practical intelligence will show up in revenue rather than test scores. The exchange follows a flurry of releases: Anthropic unveiled Fable 5 on June 9, surpassing 80% on the SWE-bench Pro engineering test, while Zhipu launched its GLM-5.2 flagship on June 17 with one-million-token context support.

Taiwanese foundry UMC is reportedly extending its collaboration with Intel beyond a 12-nanometer FinFET platform toward a 3-nanometer node, in what would mark the contract manufacturer's most significant technology leap. The arrangement lets UMC reach advanced nodes without shouldering the massive capital expenditure of building new fabs, using Intel's Arizona facilities instead. The 12nm program targets IoT, Wi-Fi and high-speed interface chips, the same silicon supply chain that feeds data centers and ASIC mining hardware, with PDK delivery slated for 2026, tape-out in 2027 and commercial production by year-end. For Intel, tapping UMC's pure-play foundry experience could strengthen Intel Foundry Services as it challenges TSMC's lead in advanced manufacturing.

Across these stories runs a single thread: capital and regulatory scrutiny are racing to catch up with AI's breakneck expansion, and crypto sits squarely in the crossfire. COINOTAG's aggregate market data underscores the caution, with the Fear and Greed Index reading 14 (Extreme Fear), Bitcoin dominance at 70.0% and total market capitalization holding near $1.79 trillion, a defensive posture consistent with a broader bear market. The risk is concrete: an official Microsoft security disclosure this week detailed a USB-spread crypto clipper that swaps wallet addresses and harvests BIP39 seed phrases over the Tor network, a reminder that as AI tooling proliferates, safeguarding an AI crypto wallet demands the same vigilance investors apply to exchange and policy risk.