Morpho Raises $175M for Institutional Credit; Crypto Tax Bills Stalled in House
Lending protocol Morpho closed a $175M funding round co-led by a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital, with strategic backers including Apollo, VanEck, Circle Ventures, Ledger, SBI Group, and Bpifrance. The deal values Morpho at up to $2 billion, ranking as one of DeFi's largest funding rounds. Morpho operates an open credit network allowing banks, fintechs, and asset managers to build custom lending markets onchain. It holds over $11 billion in deposits and counts Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, Galaxy, Bitwise, and Anchorage as users. The capital will fund technical development and institutional integrations. Meanwhile, crypto tax reform faced hurdles in the House Ways and Means hearing. The committee discussed seven drafts, including a de minimis exemption for small transactions, a fix for mining/staking double taxation, wash-sale rules for crypto, and a waiver of appraisal requirements for crypto charitable donations. However, pro-crypto Democrats questioned the staking and mining exemptions, and party leadership considered postponing the package until after the midterms, extending the timeline for these bills. In other news, crypto majors fell 2-4% ahead of CPI data, with BTC at $61.6k. Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 (Mythos) but restricted its cybersecurity capabilities, bouncing requests to older models. Humanity Protocol lost $36M after a compromised employee laptop exposed multisig keys. Kraken became the official crypto exchange supporter of the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Key facts
- Morpho raises $175M at $2B valuation for institutional credit
- House tax bills stalled amid political disagreements
- Claude Fable 5 released but cybersecurity features restricted
- Humanity Protocol loses $36M due to compromised laptop
- Kraken named official crypto exchange for FIFA World Cup 2026