Author: Leah Starr Villalobos

Ten days remain before the statutory deadline for federal agencies to publish the implementing rules under the GENIUS Act. As of this week, the rulebook is still missing, leaving stablecoin issuers to prepare against proposed texts rather than binding regulations. Seven federal agencies – the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, NCUA, Treasury, FinCEN and OFAC – are required to complete the stablecoin rulemaking by July 18, one year after the law was signed. Between December 2025 and June 2026, they released proposals covering capital, reserves, liquidity, redemption, financial crime compliance and credit union-affiliated issuers. The drafts do not settle the details,…

Public companies kept stacking Bitcoin in June, but the month’s real story played out in a corner of the market that did not exist a couple of years ago: the preferred shares that treasury firms now use to fund their coin purchases.  A new report from BitcoinTreasuries.net calls June the first true stress test for this “digital credit” market, and the results offer a mixed but telling verdict on where corporate Bitcoin adoption goes next. First, the buying. Public treasuries added close to 9,000 BTC before sales in June, or about 7,300 BTC on a net basis, worth some $427…

Nearly a month after Ripple shipped xrpld v3.2.0, the renamed successor to the Ripple Core server software, XRPScan data show that only 357 of 828 total XRP Ledger nodes (43%) have made the switch, while 426 nodes (51%) remain on v3.1.3. This is not simply a slow rollout. It is a structural illustration of the two-tier governance dynamic that defines XRPL upgrade cycles: validator consensus runs well ahead of the broader node ecosystem, and the network’s functional readiness is determined by the former rather than the latter. We shipped together with the community (40+ devs and 9 new comers)- XRP Ledger 3.2.0, lots…

Stablecoins are useful, but crypto still has a simple payment problem: users do not want to think about gas. BNB Chain’s push toward gas-free stablecoin transfers is aimed directly at that friction point, especially for wallet users who are not interested in managing network fees every time they send money. That makes this more than a small feature update. It touches one of the reasons crypto payments still feel awkward for normal users. For more details, visit the official Binance platform. TL;DR BNB Chain is pushing gas-free stablecoin transfer rails through a wallet partnership.The goal is to reduce friction for…

Paul Grewal has announced that he will step down as Coinbase’s chief legal officer on July 31, handing over leadership of the exchange’s legal team just days before the US Senate is expected to resume work on the CLARITY Act. Summary Paul Grewal will leave his role as Coinbase chief legal officer on July 31 and become an adviser. Molly Abraham will become general counsel as Congress prepares to revisit the CLARITY Act. Coinbase continues pushing for crypto market structure legislation after its SEC lawsuit was dismissed. According to posts Grewal published on X and LinkedIn, he will move into…

Strategy’s recent bitcoin sales and its formal monetization program have rattled investors, but JPMorgan analysts see a bigger danger to bitcoin: blockchain adoption that routes around public networks and the tokens that ride on them. In a report led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou and reported by The Block, the bank argued that Strategy is not the main structural threat to the asset.  The company sold 3,588 bitcoin for $216 million in early July to cover preferred dividends, its largest disposal on record, and such sales can add bursts of selling pressure. The deeper concern, the analysts said, is where…

Helium is getting a fresh liquidity window after Binance added HNT to its spot trading lineup. For a DePIN token, that matters because exchange access can quickly change who can trade the asset, how deep the order book becomes, and how visible the project is to global retail markets. The listing is also a reminder that DePIN remains one of the market’s stickier infrastructure themes. It does not always dominate the headlines, but the idea of blockchain-linked physical networks continues to attract attention from traders and builders. For more details, visit the official Binance platform. TL;DR Binance listed Helium on…

Gemini has lost 89% of its value since its September debut and is being sued by its own shareholders. BitGo is down 77%, Bullish 71%, and the pipeline behind them, Kraken, Grayscale, Consensys, Ledger, has frozen solid. The great crypto listing boom lasted about a year and destroyed most of the capital that believed in it. Here is what actually killed it, who survived and why, and what has to change before the window reopens. Summary The crypto IPO boom failed because many companies listed at cycle-peak valuations just before trading volumes and asset prices weakened. Circle held up better…

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig said the Clarity Act remains within reach, days after Congress missed its July 4 target to pass the crypto market-structure bill. “We’re so close. We have to get this done,” Selig told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.  Some analysts give the measure even odds of passage before the August 7 recess. The bill would divide oversight of digital assets between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a split the industry has sought for years. The House passed the legislation last summer. The Senate has yet to hold a floor vote. Selig,…

Bitcoin’s supply headlines have been loud, but ETF flow data is giving bulls something to point to. Farside’s numbers show a $143 million net inflow day for US spot Bitcoin ETFs, suggesting institutional buyers are still active even as government-wallet and Mt. Gox narratives create pressure. The useful way to read this is not as a guaranteed price signal, but as a fresh piece of information in a market that is trying to sort real developments from noise. That does not cancel out sell-side risk, but it helps balance the picture. Bitcoin is not dealing with supply headlines in a…