CLARITY hinges on Trump’s ethics
Polymarket suggests the odds of the CLARITY Act passing this year are just 40%, after a raft of Democratic Senators, including Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, spoke out against the bill.
A crucial Senate vote could happen as early as this week, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune stating it will definitely be held before Aug. 10.
Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren is trying to spoil the vote by highlighting how much money President Trump has extracted from the industry. She demanded Trump voluntarily release his crypto earnings for this year, after his 2025 disclosure, showed he earned more than a billion dollars from crypto last year. The controversy means that Senate Democrats are unlikely to support the bill without a provision banning elected officials promoting or issuing cryptocurrency.
Summer Mersinger, the CEO of the Blockchain Association and a former commissioner at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said: “Ethics is the big elephant in the room.”
“For my members and what we are advocating for on the Hill… look, whatever you decide on ethics, that’s really not our concern. That is politics. That’s Congress. That’s elected officials. But please don’t let it kill all the hard work that we put in the rest of the bill.”
Source: Polymarket
Prediction markets see record Q2 volume, France blocks Polmarket
Crypto markets continued to flounder in the second quarter, with the notable exception of prediction markets.
Spot trading volume across the top 10 centralized exchanges (CEXs) fell from $2.7 trillion in the first quarter to just $1.95 trillion in the second, according to CoinGecko’s latest Crypto Industry Report.
CEX perps volume also declined 10% to $12.7 trillion, while the stablecoin market slipped 1.6% to $305.1 billion. In contrast, prediction markets recorded their strongest quarter on record with $113.8 billion in notional volume.
Polymarket’s World Cup winner market alone has attracted more than $3.3 billion in trading volume, while contracts tied to the 2028 US presidential election rank among the platform’s largest markets, according to Polymarketscan data.
Meanwhile, France’s National Gambling Authority has just ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket as it considers prediction markets to be illegal gambling.
Polymarket is blocked in 33 countries… unless you have a VPN of course.
Strategy became a symbol of the dot-com crash: Could history repeat?
Senate agrees SBF should serve his time as FTX distributes another $900M
The US Senate has adopted a resolution opposing executive clemency for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
The measure cannot block a presidential pardon but reflects bipartisan Senate opposition.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in March 2024 after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges linked to FTX’s collapse in 2022.
Speculation about a possible presidential pardon grew after Bankman-Fried applied for clemency from Trump in June 2026.
On Friday, the FTX Recovery Trust said it would distribute about $900 million to creditors in the fifth round of repayments. The trust has now paid out about $10 billion since the company filed for bankruptcy.
Tokenized stocks hit record $2.3B
The global market capitalization of tokenized stocks rose to a record $2.3 billion on Wednesday, as more investors sought exposure to blockchain-based equity products.
The Ethereum network boasted the largest market share, at 34%, followed by BNB Chain with 30% and the Solana network with 23%, data aggregator Token Terminal shared in a Wednesday X post.
The largest increase came from Kraken exchange’s xStocks, which accounted for $507 million worth of tokenized stocks and Binance’s bStocks, with $334 million. Ondo Finance remained the largest tokenized stock issuer with $955 million in onchain equities, according to Token Terminal data.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which is the custodian of $114 trillion in assets, last week launched a trial of tokenized securities in partnership with more than 40 financial firms.
Robinhood Chain also aims to become a leader in tokenized stocks, however its volume to date is largely driven by memecoins.
Is Robinhood Chain’s success bullish or bearish for ETH the asset?
US and UK to align stablecoin rules, but Genius Act rules are TBA
The US Department of the Treasury and HM Treasury in the UK have issued four joint recommendations on digital assets.
The task force recommended that authorities consider a private-sector-led group focused on “testing of cross-border use cases for tokenized assets” and that financial agencies in the US and the Bank of England identify shared approaches on the regulation of tokenized assets.
The statement said that stablecoins “should be fully backed, on at least a one-to-one basis, by high-quality, liquid assets,” aligning with the US law.