marketing

Former Chainlink Head of Product Marketing Michael Robinson tweeted that he has joined the Monad Foundation and will be responsible for marketing-related work in the future. Michael Robinson worked at Chainlink from 2021 to 2026.

A federal judge in California, Alex Tse, ruled that the subscription marketing lawsuit against Anthropic's Claude Max can proceed. The judge allowed claims under California's consumer law for deceptive advertising, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of contract to continue, while dismissing other claims, including those related to the state's unfair competition law, and permitted the plaintiffs to submit an amended complaint.The proposed class action was filed in September by two Claude Max subscribers. The plaintiffs claim that the Max plans, priced at $100 and $200 per month, were advertised as providing 5 times or 20 times the usage of the Pro plan, but the weekly usage limits did not reach those multiples. Anthropic stated that the relevant multiples refer to the usage per 5-hour session and cited information disclosed on the website. Tse found that these disclosures were too far removed from the main sales page to warrant dismissal of the case at this stage.

Claudia (@0x_claudia), the former Head of Markets at Bybit, announced on X that she has joined Trust Wallet, responsible for marketing and growth, specifically including growth, branding, and community.She stated that she will work closely with Felix Fan and the team to bring on-chain finance to the next one hundred million users, with the goal of making Trust Wallet the default wallet for everyone.According to her previous post, Claudia left Bybit on October 20. She worked at Bybit for about two years, serving as the Head of Talent Acquisition, Head of Branding, and Head of Marketing, and was involved in building Bybit's payment business.

OKX founder Star Xu posted that many packages and performances ultimately prove to be makeshift. He mentioned that a security incident involving $6.3 billion reportedly began when an employee fell into a fake job interview trap, which subsequently affected two other employees, and internal AI tools may also have been involved, questioning whether this is what is called "multi-layered defense."Star stated that he does not want to speculate too much on the security control failures of competitors, but he reminded users in the crypto industry that an overly marketing-oriented corporate culture can be extremely dangerous. He noted that users may care more about event rewards, while hackers and scammers are targeting the entire principal amount; security, responsibility, and compliance should always come before marketing, as no matter how enticing the event rewards are, they cannot compensate for the loss of principal.

The marketing head of mETH Protocol, Jowella Lim (X account speicherx), announced that she has rejoined the Ethereum Layer 2 network Mantle, responsible for product marketing. She stated that Mantle has the opportunity to bring global stock exposure on-chain, and the product mStocks is in progress. The official Mantle account responded by welcoming her back.Jowella Lim mentioned that she has made a clear choice regarding her career direction. She noted that this year, areas such as tokenization, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, payments, and stablecoins are developing rapidly, making the team's direction more attractive to her. Her goal is to enhance the visibility of products and assets currently on Mantle and collaborate with ecosystem partners Bybit and Byreal. She also expressed confidence that Mantle will continue to grow among projects built for on-chain adoption.According to her personal website, Jowella Lim has been engaged in marketing at Mantle since April 2024 and has served as the marketing head of the mETH Protocol, incubated by Mantle, since January 2025, being the first marketing employee. The website states that the protocol's peak locked value is $2.19 billion. On the same day, a discussion on the MIP-36 draft appeared in the Mantle forum, proposing to confirm Halo Prime Limited as a strategic partner and issuer of mStocks, describing mStocks as tokenized certificates based on Mantle and linked to listed stocks, with the discussion not involving treasury funds. According to RootData, Mantle originated from BitDAO, completing $230 million in financing in June 2021 and $356 million through an IDO in August of the same year.

According to the New York Post, citing informed sources, Matthew Modabber, who has served as the Chief Marketing Officer of the prediction market platform Polymarket since January 2024, has been fired. Previously, the company conducted an internal investigation into a series of events that raised public concern and worried investors.One of the issues involved Modabber's team being accused of creating fake webpages to promote staged videos, which showed users profiting from fake trades. This situation was exposed in a June report by the Wall Street Journal, which subsequently triggered an investigation by the U.S. CFTC. The investigation is still ongoing, and no violations have been determined yet.Informed sources stated that Modabber was a confidant of 28-year-old CEO Shayne Coplan, and during his tenure as an executive, he often made impulsive decisions that led the company into a public relations crisis. Polymarket is finalizing Modabber's departure agreement, and both parties are maintaining mutual respect during the process.

Bybit's Marketing Director Claudia Wang announced that today is her last day at Bybit. She stated that she is leaving for personal reasons, but this is not a true farewell; Bybit will always be a part of her, and she will continue to support the company.Claudia Wang mentioned that she joined two years ago as a management trainee, supporting the CEO's office with meeting preparations and operations. Since then, she has served as the head of talent recruitment, head of branding, and head of marketing, participating in fiat, card, and payment product-related work, growing from a trainee to a leader of a large global team.She also noted that the team completed a brand overhaul and built Bybit's payment products from scratch, expanding them to over 20 new regions. Currently, Bybit cards have exceeded 4 million, and payment users are about to surpass 2 million. She stated that working with Ben, Helen, and Mazurka has been an important experience in her career.

OKX Global Managing Partner and Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique announced that after nearly seven years at OKX, he will step down and take a temporary break to focus on family and personal matters.According to insiders, Haider plans to leave before the end of 2026. He joined OKX in March 2020, where he led the brand upgrade and was involved in facilitating the Intercontinental Exchange's strategic investment of $200 million in OKX this March.

Regarding the announcement "Polygon is not dead" released by Polygon's official Twitter, which is suspected to mock the shutdown of Abstract, Polygon founder Sandeep responded that the dissemination effect of the related content "did not meet expectations," and some people attributed a completely different meaning to it. The Polygon marketing team was self-deprecating, as Polygon's fundamentals are still growing, and there was no intention to imply anything about Abstract's shutdown.Sandeep added that he was also confused when he first saw the content and emphasized that he has great respect for Abstract founder Luca Netz and his team. Since Polygon itself had also terminated the zkEVM project, he empathizes with the pain and would not mock the other party, wishing Luca and the Pudgy Penguins team all the best.

A post published by the official X account of the decentralized lending protocol Morpho stated that most curator businesses cannot sustain their operations solely through treasury fees, and their business model actually relies on private distribution agreements. The post has since been deleted.In response to this matter, Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that this is the most pessimistic statement for MORPHO holders. Morpho CEO Paul Frambot responded that the post was published by a third-party artificial intelligence marketing tool.Morpho is a decentralized lending protocol operating on networks such as Ethereum, matching borrowers and lenders through a treasury and curator mechanism while managing funds. The curator business refers to a model where third-party institutions create and manage treasuries based on the Morpho protocol and generate income from related fees.

According to Bloomberg, AI marketing startup Profound has completed a $180 million Series D funding round, with a post-money valuation of $1.8 billion. This round was led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.Profound was founded in 2024, has raised over $335 million in total funding, and is headquartered in New York. It primarily helps brands adapt to the trend of users initiating searches through AI chatbots like OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Gemini instead of traditional search engines. Its software can track the frequency of brand mentions, the contexts in which they appear, and the ways they are described across various AI models.

Bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor has warned that its third-party marketing platform Brevo, used for sending newsletters, experienced a data breach, with attackers using the platform to send phishing emails to 347,000 Trezor customers. The attackers sent emails using Trezor's domain, making the phishing attempt more deceptive, with malicious links encouraging users to download applications and enter wallet backups.Trezor stated that it shut down the domain at the DNS level within 20 minutes to prevent the links from remaining active, but approximately 2,500 people had already clicked on them. Trezor has suspended its Brevo account to stop further emails from being sent and emphasized that other Trezor systems were not affected aside from the marketing platform, while reminding users that Trezor never asks customers for wallet backups.Prior to this incident, Trezor disclosed last month that its third-party fulfillment partner ShipMonk was attacked, resulting in the data breach of 11,742 customers; last week it also reported that the names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and order numbers of another 67,000 U.S. customers were exposed in the breach. This year, cryptocurrency wallet Ledger's payment processor Global-e and wallet provider SafePal have also experienced data breaches, with approximately 39,800 customers' order information at SafePal being accessed without authorization.

According to Caixin, the "Management Measures for Online Marketing of Financial Products" jointly issued by the central bank and eight ministries will officially take effect on September 30, 2026. The measures aim to clarify the boundaries between finance and technology, and do not completely prohibit the online promotion of financial products, but rather provide specific guidance and regulations for marketing activities. It is specified that marketing financial products through public accounts, live broadcasts, and short videos should be conducted on the self-operated platforms of financial institutions or on accounts legally established by financial institutions on third-party internet platforms.In addition, marketers must be employees of financial institutions, possess qualifications for engaging in related business, and obtain authorization and consent from financial institutions. This means that if Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) want to promote financial products, they must be certified to do so.

According to ChianCatcher news, reported by The Information journalist Yueqi Yang, the annual revenue of the prediction market platform Kalshi has exceeded $4 billion, doubling from two months ago, and is currently seeking to raise a new round of financing at a valuation of $40 billion, a significant increase of 82% from its valuation of $22 billion during the Series F financing in May.In addition, the company has recently invested heavily in marketing, with reports indicating that Kalshi's operating expenses in June reached $300 million, mainly related to marketing promotions.

According to Jinshi reports, SK Hynix officially launched its marketing process for its U.S. stock listing this Monday, aiming to leverage investors' continued enthusiasm for the memory chip sector to advance its trading on U.S. exchanges.According to the filing documents, SK Hynix plans to issue approximately 17.79 million shares of common stock corresponding to American Depositary Receipts. Based on last Friday's closing price in the Korean market, the scale of this issuance is approximately $28 billion. As a leading supplier of HBM chips, SK Hynix's listing in the U.S. opens up efficient financing channels for the company.According to previously disclosed regulatory documents, SK Hynix expects its American Depositary Receipts to officially begin trading on July 10 (this Friday). Based on the current proposed issuance scale, this ADR sale will rank among the top three largest IPOs in history (the specific amount depends on the exchange rate), potentially rivaling the $29.4 billion IPO scale set by Saudi Aramco in 2019.

A Massachusetts judge approved a revised complaint submitted by the state attorney general against the prediction market platform Kalshi on Tuesday. The new complaint accuses Kalshi of illegally offering sports betting without the permission of the state's betting commission and allegedly attracting users under the age of 21 to participate in betting through marketing on college campuses.The state had previously issued a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, suspending its sports event contract business. However, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had previously submitted a brief to the court supporting Kalshi, arguing that federal agencies have exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets and are not subject to state-level regulation. Additionally, several traditional betting organizations in the U.S. are lobbying Congress to explicitly prohibit such sports-related event contracts in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act).

According to BBX data, last weekend Japan's largest financial group completed the most important cryptocurrency acquisition, and U.S. bipartisan senators launched a new regulatory offensive against prediction market platforms. The core developments are as follows:SBI Holdings, Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 8473) announced the acquisition of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank (privately held) for approximately $289 million. After the transaction is completed, SBI's cryptocurrency business will surpass all competitors, creating Japan's largest cryptocurrency exchange. SBI Holdings is one of Japan's largest independent financial services groups, already owning cryptocurrency-friendly network bank SBI Shinsei Bank, cryptocurrency asset custodian SBI Digital Asset Holdings, and multiple Bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency venture capital investments. Bitbank is one of Japan's largest spot BTC exchanges and holds an official cryptocurrency exchange license from the Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan. This acquisition marks a shift for traditional Japanese financial institutions from "strategic trial" in the cryptocurrency sector to "scale acquisition dominance," alongside the joint stablecoin plan of the three major banks: Mitsubishi UFJ ($MUFG), Sumitomo Mitsui ($SMFG), and Mizuho ($MFG) (targeting March 2027), forming the most intensive wave of cryptocurrency layout in Japan's financial industry by 2026.U.S. Senators John Curtis (Republican, Utah) and Adam Schiff (Democrat, California) reported on June 28 that they jointly sent a letter to the CFTC, urging it to conduct a formal investigation into the prediction market platform Polymarket (privately held), citing a "concerning" investigative report regarding Polymarket's "deceptive marketing" practices, which accused it of systematic misleading in user acquisition and risk disclosure. This is the third regulatory offensive against prediction market platforms initiated by Congress this year (previously, the House Oversight Committee launched an insider trading investigation on May 22); the two senators come from different parties, which is significant. For Robinhood Markets, Inc. (NASDAQ: $HOOD), this investigation poses indirect pressure—Robinhood's prediction market/event contract business (which achieved a record daily trading volume in June) faces the same regulatory qualitative disputes as Polymarket; however, Robinhood's defensive advantage lies in its ongoing application for a CFTC Designated Contract Market (DCM) license, providing a clearer compliance path compared to Polymarket.

Bitcoin mining company and AI infrastructure company IREN announced that it has acquired the creative and media agency Awaken, which focuses on content strategy and brand building for high-growth companies.According to the announcement, some core members of Awaken will join IREN, including Awaken founder and CEO Chris Parker, who will be responsible for IREN's overall branding and marketing strategy.IREN co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts stated that as the company continues to expand into new markets and customer bases, the importance of brand awareness and user engagement is increasing. The Awaken team has long been a trusted partner of IREN, and internalizing these capabilities is a natural step in the company's expansion process.