Senate Targets Prediction Markets, Copper Eyes $500M Sale, GitHub Repos Stolen

Crypto News

Prediction market operators including Kalshi and Crypto.com faced sharp criticism during a two-hour U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday, with lawmakers probing advertising practices, regulatory disputes, and concerns that platform mechanics may incentivize athlete cheating. Committee Chair Ted Cruz cited recent incidents involving NBA players and coaches accused of manipulating performance, two MLB pitchers allegedly rigging pitches, MLS yellow-card scandals, and UFC match-fixing investigations. Senator John Hickenlooper accused the platforms of unleashing predatory marketing aimed at young users. Patrick McHenry, now advising the Coalition for Prediction Markets, defended the industry by stating trading is restricted to users above 18 and that the average participant age is 33.

Cryptocurrency custody firm Copper is exploring a sale at a roughly $500 million valuation, with Cantor Fitzgerald appointed to lead the process. The crown jewel of Copper's platform is ClearLoop, a settlement system enabling delivery-versus-payment transactions inside custody without moving assets on-chain — effectively eliminating settlement risk. The firm reports more than 1,000 active counterparties and over $50 billion in monthly notional trading volume. Copper had previously weighed a public listing earlier this year, but with Bitcoin trading below $80,000 and AI absorbing most capital flows, the crypto IPO pipeline has stalled. Copper closed its enterprise custody business in 2023 to concentrate on the ClearLoop infrastructure.

GitHub confirmed that attackers stole approximately 3,800 internal code repositories after one of its employees inadvertently installed a malicious Visual Studio Code extension distributed via Microsoft's official marketplace. The plugin was engineered to exfiltrate data silently in the background. The company isolated the compromised endpoint, removed the malicious extension version, and rotated critical credentials overnight, prioritizing the highest-risk secrets. GitHub stated the breach was limited to internal repositories and that no customer data stored outside those repos was affected. Hacker group TeamPCP has claimed responsibility, demanding at least $50,000 for the stolen code on a black-hat cybercrime forum. The platform serves over 180 million developers.

MoneyGram has partnered with Tempo, a payments-focused Layer 1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, to support stablecoin settlement and validate remittance transactions. Stripe plans to route settlements to MoneyGram via Tempo's infrastructure, advancing the broader effort to migrate treasury and payment flows onto stablecoin rails. MoneyGram will serve as an "anchor remittance validator" on the network, expanding its role from blockchain user to network operator. Visa joined Tempo as an early validator in April. The U.S. Federal Reserve has identified stablecoins as a potential remedy for the friction, cost, and opacity that characterize traditional cross-border payment flows dominated by MoneyGram and Western Union.

Minnesota has joined New York, Wyoming, and Virginia in granting state-chartered banks and credit unions the legal authority to provide cryptocurrency custody services. Governor Tim Walz signed HF 3709 into law, with the legislation taking effect August 1, 2026. Institutions must adopt written policies on risk management, internal controls, and cybersecurity, and file 60-day advance notice with the state Commissioner of Commerce. The law mandates strict segregation of client digital assets from institutional holdings. St. Cloud Financial Credit Union — already operating its CU-Digital Asset Vault since March — currently safeguards approximately 13.5 BTC for members, running on Coin2Core infrastructure built by credit-union technology cooperative DaLand CUSO.

The convergence across this news cycle reflects a maturation phase for DeFi and broader digital asset infrastructure as the regulatory perimeter expands. Strategic acquisitions are accelerating: Mastercard's $1.8 billion BVNK deal, Payward's acquisition of Bitnomial, and Bullish's $4.2 billion Equiniti combination signal that crypto-native and traditional finance balance sheets are consolidating around custody, tokenization, and cross-border settlement primitives. Wall Street appetite remains uneven, with the IPO window narrowed by macro headwinds. Meanwhile, security incidents like the GitHub breach underscore the supply-chain risks embedded in modern development tooling — a concern equally relevant for institutions migrating treasury operations onto programmable settlement rails.

The dominant narrative this cycle is institutional embedding rather than retail speculation. Regulatory tightening on prediction markets contrasts with state-level liberalization of bank custody powers, illustrating a bifurcated policy landscape where lawmakers police consumer-facing gambling products while quietly enabling regulated balance sheets to hold digital assets. Stablecoins are emerging as connective tissue between legacy remittance networks and on-chain settlement, while M&A activity signals consolidation around custody and tokenization infrastructure. Even adversarial events — the GitHub repository theft — accelerate institutional scrutiny of operational security. Taken together, the cycle reads as crypto being absorbed into the regulated financial stack, with public markets, supervisors, and incumbents shaping outcomes more than retail flows.