Is September going to be a make-or-break month for the cryptocurrency market as a whole?

ABFinance never even got the chance to fail publicly with real users, real trading volume, or a real track record that most collapsing crypto exchanges leave behind when people ask what went wrong. It never got that far. Founded by a former Bybit co-CEO who left one of the industry's biggest platforms specifically to build this one, the exchange is shutting down before its planned launch ever happened, joining a genuinely unusual pileup of centralized exchange closures that's hit the industry inside a single summer. The Announcement That Ended It Before It Began ABFinance confirmed the suspension directly through its official channels, stating plainly that the platform's planned launch has been cancelled and the company will wind down operations in an orderly manner. I think what makes this particular shutdown genuinely different from the usual exchange failure story is the timeline involved. This isn't a platform that ran for years, built a user base, and eventually ran out of road. ABFinance is closing before it ever fully opened its doors to the public it was built for, which puts it in a genuinely rare category even within an industry that's seen no shortage of failed launches. From Bybit Co-CEO To Founder, In A Matter Of Weeks To understand why this closure carries real weight in the industry, you need the backstory. Helen Liu spent five years at Bybit, rising from Vice President of Human Resources through Marketing, Chief of Staff, and Chief Operating Officer before being elevated to co-CEO in 2025. Bybit confirmed on March 7, 2026 that Liu would step down effective April 30, 2026, to pursue her own entrepreneurial ambitions. Just days after that departure was confirmed, she announced her next move publicly. Liu described ABFinance as a one-stop platform designed to integrate deposits, earning, trading, and consumption, calling it a bridge between fiat and crypto assets, and stating explicitly that the platform had been built on a compliant, robust U.S. licensing system from day one specifically to establish trust with regulators and users alike. By mid-March, she was already hosting in-person community events, including a founders meetup in New York, building momentum for a launch that would ultimately never happen. A Summer Of Exchange Closures Nobody Saw Coming Here's the part of this story I think deserves far more attention than it's getting: ABFinance isn't an isolated failure, it's the latest entry in a genuinely strange cluster of centralized exchange shutdowns that's unfolded across a single summer. AscendEX ceased operations on July 1, 2026. BitMEX, the platform credited with inventing the crypto perpetual swap and once handling over $8 billion in daily volume, confirmed on July 23 that it would close entirely by September 23, ending an 11-year run after its daily volume had reportedly collapsed to under $400,000, a fraction of a percent of its former market share. BitMart followed just three days later, announcing on July 26 that it would begin an orderly wind-down after nine years of operation, sending its BMX token crashing as much as 60% in a single day. Going back slightly further, Bit.com wound down its own operations back in March 2026, migrating its users over to Matrixport. That's five centralized exchanges gone, winding down, or cancelled entirely within roughly a six-month window. I think that pattern matters more than any single closure on its own, because it suggests something structural is happening across the mid-tier exchange landscape, not just a string of unrelated, unlucky business decisions. Why ABFinance's Case Is Genuinely Different What separates ABFinance from BitMEX, BitMart , and AscendEX , though, is precisely the detail that makes it more unusual, not less. Those three platforms had years of operating history, real trading volume, and real users before their businesses eventually stopped working. ABFinance had none of that. It had a founder with genuine industry credibility, a stated commitment to full U.S. regulatory compliance from launch, and months of public community building, and it still never made it to its planned launch date at all. I think that's genuinely more telling than a mature exchange finally succumbing to declining volume after a decade in business. Whatever combination of regulatory friction, capital constraints, or strategic reconsideration led to this outcome, it happened fast enough that a founder who'd just left one of the industry's largest platforms specifically to build this one couldn't get it across the finish line within the same year she announced it. What This Wave Of Closures Signals For The Industry I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of these closures share a similar tone in their public statements. BitMart's own wind-down notice cited its operating conditions, market environment, and future strategic direction, notably without pointing to insolvency, a hack, or a regulatory enforcement action. That's language that reads, to me, as the corporate equivalent of a business that simply stopped generating enough revenue to justify continuing, a dynamic that's becoming increasingly common as capital and trading volume concentrate around the largest handful of global exchanges, while mid-tier and newly launching platforms find it harder to compete for both users and increasingly demanding regulatory requirements simultaneously. ABFinance's cancellation before launch fits that same underlying story, just compressed into a shorter timeline and playing out before the public ever got the chance to actually use the product. Building a fully U.S.-compliant exchange from scratch was always going to be an expensive, slow, regulation-heavy undertaking, and Liu's own framing at launch, leading with compliance and licensing before anything else, suggests the team understood exactly how high that bar was set from the very beginning. What Comes Next For Users And The Broader Market For anyone who had already engaged with ABFinance ahead of its planned launch, the company's official statements remain the primary source for next steps, and I'd treat official announcements as the only reliable place to track further updates given how much confusion tends to surround exchange wind-downs generally. Beyond ABFinance itself, I think this summer's broader pattern is worth watching closely heading into the rest of 2026. When a founder with Liu's specific pedigree and a genuine head start on regulatory compliance still can't get a new exchange across the finish line, it's a meaningful data point for anyone assessing just how difficult the current environment has become for new entrants trying to compete against an increasingly consolidated field of dominant, established platforms. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. 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Gunna's name belongs to a particular kind of internet memory that never really dies, it just waits. I've watched enough of these resurface to know they usually come back for a reason, and this one is no exception. On August 15, 2026, that memory came roaring back for the Atlanta rapper, when a post from X user @Catolicc questioning why rappers "glaze crypto people" only to "extract another coin" pulled a four-year-old controversy right back into the timeline. Attached to the post was an old clip of Gunna laughing at dinner, tagged to his 2022 collaboration with Gunna on "on one tonight." On-chain investigator ZachXBT had quote-tweeted the post, and the internet was once again relitigating one of hip-hop's messiest brushes with crypto. It's a story that, on paper, is old news. But the way it resurfaced, organically, through a casual observation about rappers and crypto grifts, tells me something about how little trust has actually been rebuilt between artists and their fanbases since the 2022 crypto crash. Here's the full picture, pieced together from the original posts and the public record. What The Viral Post Actually Said The post that kicked things off this time wasn't even about Gunna specifically. @Catolicc's original message was a broader complaint about a pattern many crypto-watchers have noticed: rappers cozying up to crypto influencers and projects, seemingly to build credibility they can cash in on later when they "inevitably launch and extract another coin." It's a cynical read, and honestly, I don't think it's an unfounded one given how many celebrity coin launches from the 2021–2022 bull run ended in accusations of rug pulls. That framing set the stage for what came next, a reply that didn't let the moment pass without receipts. ZachXBT's Response Dug Up The Receipts Blockchain investigator ZachXBT, known across crypto circles for exposing scams and tracing stolen funds, replied directly to the post with a callback: "Who remembers back in 2022 when Gunna launched a scam and deleted the post after lying his account got 'hacked.'" He backed the claim with screenshots he says he obtained showing private text exchanges between people allegedly negotiating the promotional deal behind the scenes, alongside Gunna's original public apology tweet in which he insisted his account had been compromised. Revisiting The Original 2022 "Pushin Peth" Saga To understand why this resurfaced post hit a nerve, you have to go back to late January 2022. Gunna, fresh off the massive success of his single "Pushin P," tweeted an endorsement for a new cryptocurrency called PushinPETH, describing it as a "crypto metaverse" project and urging fans to join its Telegram, saying he was "taking this to the moon". The name was an obvious play on his own hit record, and fans took it as a genuine co-sign from an artist they trusted, which, in my view, is exactly what made the fallout sting so much when it collapsed. Within hours, the tweet vanished. So did the @pushinpeth account tied to the project. Crypto watchers, ZachXBT included, quickly flagged the coin's price chart, which showed a familiar pattern: a sharp spike after Gunna's tweet, followed by a near-total collapse, the textbook signature of a rug pull, where early holders or insiders cash out at the expense of everyone who bought in after the promotion. Gunna's Hacked Account Defense And The Pushback Days later, Gunna addressed the backlash directly, posting a statement to his followers claiming he had no knowledge of the PushinPETH project, that his account had been hacked, and that the deletion was his own doing once he noticed the unauthorized post. He apologized to anyone who lost money and denied ever knowingly co-signing a scam. ZachXBT wasn't convinced. In a follow-up thread at the time, he laid out a timeline arguing the tweet had reportedly been planned in advance, down to an alleged specific posting time, and that direct messages appeared to show coordination between Gunna's camp and the coin's developer ahead of the launch, details that, if accurate, would directly contradict the hacking explanation. I'll say this much: the "hacked account" defense has become such a common line in crypto controversies that it's easy to see why skeptics like ZachXBT don't take it at face value anymore. Gunna has never publicly revisited the incident in detail since, and no legal action or regulatory finding tied to the episode has been reported. Why This Old Story Is Trending All Over Again What makes this week's resurfacing notable isn't new evidence, it's timing and appetite. Crypto culture in 2026 is still reckoning with a long string of celebrity-backed token collapses, and any post that taps into that fatigue tends to travel fast. @Catolicc's original observation wasn't even naming Gunna directly at first; it was ZachXBT's reply that turned a general grievance into a specific, sourced accusation, pulling Gunna's name back into a conversation he likely thought had faded years ago. For now, there's no indication Gunna has responded to this latest round of attention, and neither he nor his team has issued a fresh statement addressing the resurfaced claims as of this writing. The episode remains, as it did in 2022, a case of conflicting accounts: an artist who says he was hacked, and an investigator who says the evidence tells a different story. I'd encourage readers to review both sides directly through public archives rather than relying on secondhand retellings. What's clear to me is that in an industry where fan trust is currency, old receipts have a way of resurfacing at the worst possible moment and in the crypto world, nothing ever really gets deleted for good. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on X @nulltxnews

Daily staking revenue has stayed below $100K and could delay the impact of the buyback program.