Franklin Templeton has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch two exchange-traded funds that channel corporate dividend payments directly into bitcoin, the latest sign of Wall Street’s push to embed cryptocurrency into traditional investment structures.
The Thursday filing registers the Franklin US Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin US Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF, with an effective date as early as Sept. 1, 2026.
The “DRIP” name borrows from dividend reinvestment plans — a mechanism long used by investors to compound stock positions over time — and repurposes it to accumulate bitcoin rather than additional shares.
Both funds launch with a 95% allocation to U.S. large-cap equities and a 5% allocation to bitcoin. The first tracks the VettaFi US Large-Cap 500 Bitcoin DRIP Index, offering broad market exposure across approximately 498 securities with market caps ranging from $7.5 billion to $4.9 trillion, while the second tracks a VettaFi innovation-focused variant concentrated on growth companies.
Under the index methodology, dividends generated by the underlying stock portfolios flow into bitcoin-linked instruments — including spot bitcoin exchange-traded products, futures contracts, options, and in some cases a wholly-owned subsidiary in the Cayman Islands — rather than being redistributed to investors or reinvested in equities.
The structure creates what one analysis described as “an automatic, low-maintenance 5% bitcoin feed funded entirely by equity dividends.”
Quarterly rebalancing rules would trim bitcoin allocations above 5% back to 4.5%, while a hard cap limits bitcoin exposure to 20% of the portfolio between rebalancing periods. No fees have been disclosed in the preliminary filing.
Bitcoin ETFs are getting popular
The proposal arrives amid a wave of crypto ETF innovation following the SEC’s publication of generic listing standards for crypto-linked funds in late 2025.
Bitwise predicted more than 100 such ETFs could launch in 2026, and Bloomberg Intelligence counted well over 100 filings in the pipeline at the end of last year. Franklin Templeton’s dividend-into-bitcoin design is the latest variation on a theme that has produced covered-call income products and other structured wrappers competing for assets beyond plain spot exposure, where BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust dominates with tens of billions in net assets.
The filings extend a broader digital asset buildout at Franklin Templeton.
In May, Franklin Templeton entered a partnership with Payward — the parent of crypto exchange Kraken — to tokenize traditional investment products and offer its BENJI tokenized money market fund on Kraken’s platform as a collateral management tool for institutional clients. Earlier this month, Franklin Templeton integrated BENJI into MoonPay Trade, enabling institutional users to swap between stablecoins like USDC and USDT and the tokenized fund through MoonPay’s on-chain infrastructure.
This year, Franklin Templeton also launched a dedicated Franklin Crypto division through its acquisition of CoinFund spinoff 250 Digital, and struck a separate agreement with Ondo Finance to offer tokenized versions of its ETFs for 24/7 trading from crypto wallets, targeting investors outside the United States. Taken together, the moves position the $1.5 trillion asset manager as one of the most active traditional finance firms in the digital asset space.
The new Franklin Templeton DRIP ETFs join a broader institutional push into bitcoin at a moment when the asset is under price pressure. BTC trades below $62,700 as of Friday morning, off more than 50% from its October 2025 peak near $126,000.
Just this week, BlackRock launched the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA), a new fund that holds exposure to Bitcoin through IBIT while selling covered-call options on 25–35% of its holdings to generate monthly income, targeting annual yields of 15%–25%. BlackRock ETF executive Jay Jacobs said the product is designed to attract traditional investors by turning Bitcoin’s volatility into a source of income, while offering a lower-volatility alternative to holding Bitcoin directly.
Kevin Warsh chaired his first Federal Open Market Committee meeting this week and immediately showed his hawkish colors. Rates stayed steady, but the new Fed Chair made it clear he intends to prioritize price stability and reduce loose forward guidance. While Warsh is focused on managing the dollar’s ongoing challenges, his debut actually highlights something much deeper: the dollar still requires constant human intervention to avoid dilution and debasement.
Bitcoin, by contrast, has a hard-capped supply and predictable issuance that no chairman can change. Warsh’s first meeting as Fed Chair makes the advantage of Bitcoin’s fixed supply more obvious than ever.
The System Warsh Is Trying to Manage
Warsh inherited a central bank that must constantly adjust the money supply to balance inflation and employment.
This is not a temporary problem. Its built into how fiat currencies operate. The Federal Reserve can expand or contract the money supply at will, and history shows it tends to expand over time.
Since the U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, the dollar has lost roughly 88% of its purchasing power. A dollar from that era now buys what about twelve cents buys today.
U.S. M2 money supply has grown from hundreds of billions of dollars to more than $22 trillion. Every major expansion represents dilution for existing holders.
The Structural Problem Fiat Cannot Escape
Even a disciplined and hawkish chairman like Warsh must work inside a system where the money supply is discretionary. Policy decisions, political pressures, and economic shocks all influence how much new money enters circulation. This creates recurring cycles of inflation and erosion of purchasing power. Bitcoin removes this discretion entirely.
Bitcoin’s Fixed Supply Changes the Equation
Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins. New supply is issued on a transparent schedule that halves every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years, until issuance approaches zero around 2140. No individual, committee, or government can increase that total.
This creates a level of monetary predictability that fiat systems cannot match. The rules are enforced by code and network consensus rather than policy statements. Once a block is sufficiently confirmed, the transaction history becomes practically immutable.
Why Warsh’s Approach Makes the Contrast Clearer
Warsh’s emphasis on price stability and reduced forward guidance is an attempt to bring more discipline to the current system. That effort itself reveals the core difference: the dollar needs active management to prevent excessive debasement. Bitcoin’s supply rules do not require ongoing intervention or trust in any central authority.
A hawkish Fed Chair trying to restrain inflation is not a threat to Bitcoin’s long-term case. It is evidence that the fiat system continues to need restraint. Bitcoin was designed so that restraint is built into the protocol from the start.
The Practical Difference
Feature
Fiat (USD)
Bitcoin
Maximum Supply
None — can be expanded
Hard cap of 21 million
Issuance Control
Discretionary (Fed policy)
Algorithmic and transparent
Ability to Change Rules
Relatively easy through policy
Extremely difficult (requires consensus)
Inflation Trajectory
Managed target, often missed
Predictable decline toward zero
Transparency
Partial
Fully verifiable on-chain
Warsh’s first FOMC meeting shows a serious attempt to manage the dollar responsibly. At the same time, it underscores why a money with truly fixed and unchangeable supply rules offers a fundamentally different foundation.
Bitcoin does not promise stable prices in the short term. It promises something narrower but more powerful: a monetary base that cannot be diluted by policy decisions. In a world where even committed central bankers must constantly fight against expansion, that fixed supply stands out as the clearest structural advantage.
For public companies and operators sitting on large cash reserves, this reality carries direct consequences. Cash sitting in bank accounts or short-term instruments continues to face gradual erosion through inflation, even under a more disciplined Fed Chair. Warsh’s emphasis on price stability is welcome, but it does not change the fundamental design of fiat — where the supply can still expand when policymakers decide it must.
Many CFOs are now quietly reevaluating what it means to hold hundreds of millions, or even billions, in a currency whose value is subject to ongoing management. Bitcoin’s fixed supply offers a fundamentally different option: an asset that cannot be diluted by policy decisions and whose scarcity is guaranteed by protocol rather than promise.
For operators thinking beyond the next few quarters, treating a portion of treasury reserves as a long-term store of value rather than pure liquidity is becoming a more serious strategic consideration.
Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
A stress test that showed both strengths and weaknesses
When large sums leave a financial system quickly, hidden weaknesses often become visible. In traditional finance, such situations often lead to emergency lending programs, withdrawal limits or government-backed bailouts.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) works differently.
Aave is one of crypto’s biggest lending platforms. In April 2026, users withdrew about $8.45 billion from the protocol after the KelpDAO rsETH bridge exploit raised concerns across DeFi markets.
Aave’s own smart contracts were not compromised. The pressure came from an external rsETH bridge incident that affected Aave through collateral, borrowing and liquidity channels. The protocol’s core logic continued to function, but the episode was not smooth. Some markets came under severe liquidity pressure, and emergency controls were used to contain the damage.
That made the outcome more complicated. Aave avoided a full breakdown, but the event also showed how quickly stress can spread when assets, collateral and liquidity are closely connected.
For Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the event showed that DeFi had become more mature. But independent analysts reviewing the same data took a more cautious view.
While Aave survived, many questioned whether surviving the event was enough to answer concerns about the real strength of DeFi lending protocols.
What led to the $8.45B in withdrawals
The pressure did not begin with a hack on Aave itself. It began with the KelpDAO rsETH bridge exploit in April 2026.
Attackers stole about $292 million worth of rsETH from KelpDAO’s LayerZero bridge. That raised concerns about whether some rsETH tokens were fully backed. The concern quickly spread because rsETH was used across DeFi, including as collateral in Aave markets.
This created a direct problem for Aave. If collateral tied to rsETH lost trust or value, lenders could face bad-debt risk. Users began withdrawing funds as they tried to reduce their exposure before conditions became worse.
The withdrawals then added pressure to Aave’s liquidity. As more users pulled funds, some markets became highly utilized. In simple terms, most of the available liquidity had already been borrowed or withdrawn, making it harder for some users to exit immediately.
The incident showed how an external asset problem can still affect a lending protocol. In DeFi, assets often move across bridges, lending markets and other protocols. A problem in one part of the system can quickly affect another.
That is what made the episode look like a DeFi bank run. Users were not waiting for branches to open or banks to approve transfers. They could react in real time. But the event also showed an important limit: users can try to withdraw at any time, but actual withdrawals still depend on available liquidity and protocol conditions.
Did you know? The largest bank runs in history often unfolded over days or weeks. In DeFi, similar events can happen within hours because blockchain protocols never close, and users can move funds instantly from anywhere in the world.
Stani Kulechov’s view: The system held firm
Kulechov framed the incident as evidence of Aave’s resilience. In his view, the core protocol worked as designed, even during a period of heavy stress.
That distinction matters. Aave did not suffer a protocol exploit, but the markets around it still came under pressure.
As withdrawals increased, some markets reached full utilization. That meant liquidity became limited in those markets, making it harder for some users to withdraw immediately. Aave’s risk managers also had to use built-in controls, including emergency freezes and changes to risk parameters, to contain the damage.
rsETH volume surged during the exploit
Seen this way, Aave did pass an important real-world stress test, but not without strain. Supporters of the platform point to several features that set DeFi apart from traditional finance.
Collateral is visible on-chain.
Risk settings are publicly available.
Liquidations follow smart contract rules.
Anyone can inspect protocol activity in real time.
These features can reduce some of the information gaps that have contributed to banking crises in the past. But they do not remove every risk. DeFi lending protocols can still face problems from external assets, bridges, liquidity shortages and fast-moving user behavior.
To supporters, Aave’s survival showed that open, rule-based systems can keep operating under heavy pressure. To critics, the incident showed that transparency alone is not enough. DeFi can still require emergency action when liquidity stress spreads across connected markets.
Survival does not mean safety
Critics warn against treating the outcome as full proof that Aave’s design is safe. The protocol survived, but that does not mean every part of the system worked perfectly.
Stress events can be read in different ways. Strong design may explain part of Aave’s performance, but favorable market conditions may have also helped.
External analysts noted that large exposure remains concentrated across many DeFi platforms. When a small group of users controls very large positions, their actions can affect the stability of the whole protocol.
Concentration risk has long been a concern in traditional finance. The same concern applies to DeFi.
If several major borrowers close their positions at the same time during market stress, the impact could be bigger than current risk models expect.
Avoiding a crisis this time does not guarantee the same result next time.
Did you know? Aave first launched in 2017 under the name ETHLend. It later rebranded and grew from a peer-to-peer lending marketplace into one of the largest liquidity pool-based lending protocols in crypto.
How Aave manages risk
Aave is more than a basic lending platform. Over time, it has added several layers of protection to help reduce wider risks.
Borrowers on Aave can take loans only within set loan-to-value limits. Liquidation thresholds decide when collateral can be sold. Supply caps limit how much exposure can build around certain assets. Borrow caps limit how much users can borrow.
Isolation Mode helps limit the impact of higher-risk collateral. Efficiency Mode, known as E-Mode, uses special settings for assets that usually move together. Governance, supported by expert risk advisers, adjusts these settings when needed.
During the recent withdrawal surge, these safeguards generally worked as planned. Core protocol functions continued, but some markets came under strain. Utilization reached 100% in major pools, limiting withdrawals for some users.
Still, observers argue that DeFi risk management needs to keep improving. Governance decisions can still take time, and risk models may not adjust quickly enough during fast-moving events.
Stress tests often rely on past events, which may miss new types of spillover risk. The real task is not only to avoid earlier problems. It is also to prepare for threats that have not appeared yet.
Aave v4 spokes overview
The hidden risk of connected DeFi platforms
One of DeFi’s biggest strengths is also one of its biggest risks. The same connections that make it useful can also make it fragile.
Composability allows applications to connect and work together. Funds placed in one protocol can support activity in another. This helps new products grow faster and can make the system more efficient. But it also creates more links between platforms.
A loan on one platform may depend on collateral from another. That collateral may then be tied to leveraged positions across other systems. Over time, this can create a complex financial network.
In normal market conditions, composability opens up possibilities that are difficult to find in traditional finance. But during stressful periods, it can increase the risk of problems spreading from one platform to another.
A platform’s strength cannot be judged in isolation. The condition of the wider DeFi system also matters.
Did you know? Traditional banks carry out regular stress tests under regulatory supervision. In DeFi, stress tests often happen unexpectedly in live markets, with real users, real assets and no chance to rehearse.
What users should take away
For depositors and investors, the episode is an important reminder. A protocol’s size and reputation should not be confused with complete safety. Users need to understand the assets supporting the protocols they use.
Governance proposals also deserve close attention because they decide the protections around deposited funds. Diversification still matters, even in DeFi.
For builders, the takeaway is just as clear. They should design for extreme conditions and keep testing their basic assumptions. They also need to recognize that transparency alone does not remove wider risks.
The incident shows that strength is best judged through repeated performance across several tests, not one event. One stress test provides evidence, but it does not provide certainty.
Aave passed this test, but questions remain
Aave’s ability to handle roughly $8.45 billion in withdrawals deserves attention. The protocol kept working during one of the largest liquidity shocks DeFi has faced.
The result is important, but it should not be treated as the final word on Aave’s risk profile.
Supporters see it as proof that open and transparent systems can survive panic without bailouts or emergency measures. Critics, however, see it as a sign that hidden weaknesses may still exist beneath the surface.
Both views have some truth.
Aave showed that DeFi can withstand heavy pressure. The bigger challenge is making sure that strength holds when the next crisis arrives in an unexpected way.
Kalshi, the prediction markets platform that has become the dominant force in U.S. event contracts, is in informal talks with investment banks about a potential initial public offering, The Information reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the company’s financials.
The disclosure caps a period of rapid transformation for the four-year-old company. Kalshi’s annualized revenue has crossed $2 billion — triple its November 2025 figure — after spikes in trading tied to the NBA playoffs and the FIFA World Cup drove volume to record levels.
In May, the platform recorded $16.81 billion in monthly trading volume, up from $14.81 billion in April.
The IPO conversations remain at an early stage, and no listing is expected before late 2027 or 2028. As part of the discussions, Kalshi is asking prospective bank advisers to integrate with its platform, a move designed to give institutional clients of those banks direct trading access.
The news lands weeks after Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series F round led by Coatue at a $22 billion valuation — double the company’s valuation from January. The round drew participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, IVP, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest.
Kalshi’s monster numbers
Kalshi commands more than 90% of U.S. prediction market activity. Its annualized trading volume climbed from $52 billion to $178 billion over the past year, and institutional trading on the platform jumped 800% in the six months ended in early May.
Those numbers have drawn attention from Wall Street firms looking for new venues to deploy capital.
The company was founded in 2020 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lage, graduates of the MIT and Y Combinator programs, to build a regulated exchange where users can trade on the outcomes of real-world events — from Federal Reserve decisions and economic indicators to sports results and political races.
For years, Kalshi waged a legal battle against the CFTC for the right to list political event contracts. It prevailed in late 2024 when a federal court ruled in the company’s favor, unlocking a market that now generates billions in annual trading volume.
Kalshi plans to deploy its latest capital toward institutional expansion, including block trading capabilities, new risk products for hedge funds, asset managers, and insurers, and upgrades to its core trading infrastructure.
IPO timing will depend in part on broader market conditions and the durability of Kalshi’s growth. The prediction market space has attracted a wave of competitors, including Polymarket, but Kalshi’s status as a CFTC-regulated exchange gives it advantages in institutional adoption that decentralized rivals cannot replicate.
Should Kalshi go public in 2027 or 2028 at a valuation near its last private round, it would rank among the largest U.S. fintech IPOs in recent years.
Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil, who chairs the House subcommittee on digital assets, introduced a law to prevent certain public officials from “wagering on public policy issues and political outcomes,” notably without mentioning lawmakers in the White House.
In a Thursday notice, Steil said he had introduced the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act, which could bar “members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children” from using policy-aligned event contracts on prediction markets platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The bill proposed that elected officials in violation pay a $2,000 fee or 10% of the value of the prohibited bets on the platforms.
Source: Committee on House Administration
The proposed law did not specifically bar US lawmakers from using prediction markets platforms or making bets on sporting events, but prohibited wagers on specific government policies, government actions and “political outcomes,” presumably including election results. If passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, the law could take effect in 180 days after enactment.
Steil’s bill was the latest attempt by members of Congress to address lawmakers potentially using insider information to profit on event contracts. The issue drew attention from many in the public after an incident involving a soldier who allegedly made more than $400,000 betting on the removal of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, who was ousted by US forces in January.
Related: Polymarket weighs KYC requirements amid global crackdown on prediction markets
Although the proposed law follows attempts from other lawmakers to crack down on insider trading on prediction markets, Steil’s legislation did not extend to White House officials, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is a strategic adviser to Kalshi and an adviser to Polymarket, which was also a sponsor of the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House on Sunday.
Cointelegraph reached out to Steil’s office for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Federal regulator still fighting for control of prediction markets
Under Trump, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its chair Michael Selig have claimed that the federal agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” in the regulation and enforcement around prediction markets. The CFTC has already filed multiple lawsuits against state-level authorities restricting or banning the platforms, claiming that under the Commodity Exchange Act, event contracts can be regulated as “swaps” and not bets.
Some experts believe that the legal fight could be headed to the Supreme Court next.
Magazine: The end of anon? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities
Charles Schwab is working with Cboe Global Markets to launch a new type of options contract that would allow customers to make yes-or-no wagers on the performance of the S&P 500, marking the brokerage’s first move into prediction markets, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The feature is expected to roll out to Schwab customers in the coming months, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Unlike traditional prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which typically offer futures-style contracts tied to the outcome of events, Schwab’s product would function more like a binary option, in which the contract would pay a fixed cash amount or expire worthless depending on whether the S&P 500 closes above or below a specified target price.
Schwab and Cboe are also in talks to offer a similar product tied to a Cboe feature known as the “Plus Zone,” which would allow traders to receive a partial payout when their prediction is close to the final outcome, even if the index does not finish exactly at the target level.
Bitcoin has traded below the estimated cost to mine it for five straight months, according to JPMorgan analysts, leaving roughly one in five miners unprofitable and pushing publicly listed operators to sell a record volume of coins.
In a client note circulated this week, analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said bitcoin mining economics have “worsened” in 2026. JPMorgan places the current all-in production cost of bitcoin at about $78,000, a figure derived from electricity, hardware depreciation, and overhead expenses across public miners.
With bitcoin trading near $63,000, the gap between spot price and breakeven has created a sustained squeeze across the sector.
One of the most notable shifts JPMorgan flags is a structural change in how the Bitcoin network itself responds to price movements. The beta of mining difficulty to BTC prices — a measure of how much difficulty moves for a given move in price — has risen to 0.62 over the past six months. That figure reflects a network in which a higher share of miners sit at or near their cost floor, switching machines on or off as prices shift rather than maintaining consistent operations.
The pattern became visible in early June, when mining difficulty fell 10.09%, its second-largest single decline of the year. Bitcoin’s hashrate dropped 12% in June, according to Galaxy Research. A comparable 10% difficulty drawdown occurred in January, marking two episodes of this scale within one calendar year.
The financial strain has pushed publicly traded miners into a corner. Operators including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer sold a combined 32,000 bitcoin in Q1 2026 alone to fund operating expenses, according to data from TheEnergyMag cited in the JPMorgan report. That figure surpasses those companies’ total bitcoin sales for all of 2025, and it sets a new quarterly record — eclipsing the previous high of 20,000 bitcoin set in Q2 2022, during the bear market that followed the Terra-Luna collapse.
Hashprice, a metric that captures mining revenue per unit of computing power, sits at roughly $33 per petahash per second per day, according to Hashrate Index. That level places approximately 20% of the global mining industry in unprofitable territory, per CoinShares’ Q1 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report, which JPMorgan cited in its analysis.
A contrarian signal for bitcoin
Despite the grim conditions, JPMorgan’s analysts stopped short of a bearish conclusion. The team noted that weak market sentiment of this kind has, in past cycles, served as a contrarian indicator for future price appreciation.
They expect elevated hashrate sensitivity and larger difficulty adjustments to persist as long as BTC remains well below its production cost.
Further capitulation among higher-cost operators is possible in the first half of 2026 without a material price recovery. Miners collectively held approximately 1.8 million bitcoin at the time of publication, down from 1.86 million at the end of 2023, a sign that treasury drawdowns are an ongoing feature of the current environment.
Binance is allowed to provide crypto trading access to users in the Philippines through its arrangement with BlockShoals Technologies, but neither company is authorized to handle peso transfers or perform other activities regulated by the country’s central bank, according to legal adviser Marie Antonette Quiogue.
Quiogue, head of legal at BlockShoals, told Cointelegraph in an interview on Friday at Philippine Blockchain Week 2026 that Binance’s local operations fall under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crypto asset service provider (CASP) framework. She said BlockShoals serves as a crypto asset intermediary, introducing Philippine users to Binance’s global trading platform.
The arrangement forms part of Binance’s effort to reestablish a presence in the Philippines after regulators moved to restrict access to the exchange over licensing concerns in 2024. Under the structure presented by BlockShoals, the company participates in the SEC’s Strategic Sandbox, or StratBox.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the nation’s central bank, told Cointelegraph that neither Binance nor BlockShoals is authorized to operate as a virtual asset service provider (VASP).
“Participation in the regulatory sandbox does not exempt an entity from complying with applicable laws, rules, and regulations, including any licensing requirements imposed by relevant regulators,” the BSP said, adding that it was coordinating with the SEC on the matter.
Cointelegraph’s Ezra Reguerra (left) with BlockShoals head of legal Marie Antonette Quiogue (right). Photo: Cointelegraph
Quiogue did not dispute the BSP’s statement and acknowledged that neither Binance nor BlockShoals had applied for a local VASP license. The legal adviser argued that the absence of a VASP license does not prevent the companies from providing services under SEC jurisdiction.
“Trading, the activity of trading, is clearly under the jurisdiction of the SEC,” Quiogue said. “Binance and BlockShoals, we are not moving pesos, which is clearly under the jurisdiction of the BSP.”
Related: Meta rolls out stablecoin payouts for creators in Philippines, Colombia
She said the regulatory structure requires BlockShoals and Binance to obtain authorization from the relevant regulator whenever they introduce services outside the SEC’s remit.
“If BlockShoals and Binance will be offering any product that is regulated by any other government agency, you have to get an authority from them,” she said.
Binance returns after Philippine access restrictions
Binance first drew regulatory scrutiny in the Philippines in November 2023, when the SEC warned the public that the platform was not authorized to sell or offer securities in the country because it had not obtained the necessary license and registration.
In March 2024, the commission said it had asked the National Telecommunications Commission to block access to the Binance website and related webpages. Local internet providers subsequently began restricting access to the platform following the order.
At the time of publication, Binance’s platform was accessible to users in the Philippines.
Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express
AWS turned on AI traffic monetization inside AWS WAF on Monday, letting any site behind Amazon CloudFront charge AI agents per request in USDC through Coinbase’s x402 protocol. It is the first time a hyperscale cloud has wired onchain settlement into its content-delivery edge.
Amazon Web Services on Monday turned on AI traffic monetization inside AWS WAF, letting any site behind Amazon CloudFront charge AI agents per request in stablecoins through Coinbase’s x402 protocol. It is the first time a hyperscale cloud has wired onchain settlement directly into its content-delivery edge.
The new capability is a first-party feature of AWS WAF Bot Control, available now at no extra charge for CloudFront customers, AWS announced on its news blog. Payment settlement and verification flow through Coinbase’s x402 Facilitator, with publishers able to accept USDC on Base or Solana directly to a self-managed wallet. Stripe and Machine Payments Protocol support are listed as coming soon.
When a Monetize rule matches an incoming request, AWS WAF returns an HTTP 402 Payment Required response carrying a JSON price manifest with the per-page price, accepted networks, destination wallet and payment timeout. Any x402-compatible agent runtime signs the payment, the Facilitator verifies it onchain, and the content is served inside a single request cycle, with no new accounts, invoices or API keys.
The launch extends a Coinbase-Amazon thread that started in May with Bedrock AgentCore Payments, which wired x402 into AWS on the agent side. CloudFront now closes the loop on the publisher side. The underlying protocol spun out under the Linux Foundation in April with AWS as one of more than 20 founding members, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said last week the platform has already processed more than 160 million autonomous x402 transactions over the past year.
“Agent traffic is growing exponentially, and we’re just getting started,” Nishit Sawhney, General Manager of AWS Edge Services, said in the Coinbase post. “Now, in partnership with Coinbase and x402, we can answer three questions before a single byte is served: who is this agent, what’s its intent, and is it authorized to pay.” AWS WAF Bot Control classifies more than 650 AI bot and agent types, including GPTBot, Claude-Web and Perplexity-Bot, with separate pricing for each verification tier.
Agent-native payment rails now sit alongside the cloud console toggles developers already use to configure caching and firewall rules. AWS said it does not process payments or take a cut of content revenue; disbursement runs through the publisher’s chosen wallet. Pricing tiers, license terms and any chains beyond Base and Solana are left to the publisher to configure, and neither company has disclosed launch customers or early-revenue figures.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act sits on the Senate calendar eligible for a floor vote, with House Agriculture digital-assets subcommittee chair Dusty Johnson signaling a fast House companion. The bill needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear the 60-vote cloture threshold before the August recess.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act sits on the Senate Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 423, eligible for a floor vote at any time leadership chooses to schedule one. House Agriculture digital-assets subcommittee chair Dusty Johnson said Thursday the House will move fast on a companion if the Senate clears the bill before the August recess.
The bill was placed on the calendar June 1 after a 15-9 Senate Banking Committee markup on May 14, with all 13 Republicans joined by Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks. Both Democrats attached caveats that their committee votes do not commit them to support final passage. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), one of the bill’s lead Republican shepherds, said this week he still hopes Congress can finish the work before the July 4 recess, the White House’s stated signing target.
The Math, Exactly
The bill must clear cloture to escape a filibuster, which means 60 votes. Republicans hold roughly 53 seats, leaving the framework about seven votes short even with full Republican unity. Gallego and Alsobrooks are the only Democrats publicly on record from committee, and both flagged their support as contingent.
That gap of seven-plus Democratic votes is now the entire story. Eleanor Terrett, host of Fox Business’ Crypto in America, called the July 4 timeline “realistically impossible” on June 14, citing the ethics standoff, House-Senate text reconciliation, and the cloture math. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), the Senate’s lead crypto policymaker, has said an August-recess vote is more realistic than a pre-July-4 one.
What CLARITY Does
The bill sorts every digital asset into one of three legal categories. Digital commodities, including Bitcoin and, depending on a maturity test, Ether, fall under Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority for spot and cash markets, a substantial expansion for an agency that has historically only regulated derivatives. Investment-contract assets sold to fund a central team stay with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Payment stablecoins sit with banking regulators under the GENIUS Act framework.
That CFTC-primary architecture for tokens that aren’t securities is the part the industry has wanted for years. It would also codify XRP’s status as a digital commodity in federal statute, a permanence that an agency-level determination cannot match. The House passed its version 294-134 in July 2025 with more than 70 Democratic votes.
Where the Seven Votes Come From
The Democrats most likely to cross over are the moderates who signed onto a 2025 crypto framework laying out the conditions for their cooperation. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has worked with Republicans on prior crypto drafts and told CoinDesk reporters at the May markup that he still wants to keep working the bill, is the most-cited target. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has said Democrats will not allow passage without an ethics provision aimed at officials profiting from crypto holdings. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) are the other names floor strategists keep returning to.
Their conditions are consistent and known: conflict-of-interest language addressing the prior administration’s crypto dealings, stablecoin-yield rules, illicit-finance and anti-money-laundering provisions, and protections for decentralized finance. A Van Hollen ethics amendment was rejected 13-11 on a party-line vote during committee markup; floor strategists are now hunting a narrower ethics text that adds seven Democrats without losing Republicans who view broader language as a bill-killer. A separate fight over sports-prediction carveouts is running in parallel as the American Gaming Association and tribal coalitions press Senate leadership.
Crypto-backed money sits behind the negotiation. Fairshake’s affiliated PACs, including the Democrat-supporting Protect Progress arm, reported $193 million on hand earlier this year with $25 million each from Coinbase and Ripple and $24 million from a16z. Protect Progress already spent $1.5 million opposing one House Democratic primary in March, a signal of what crossover-friendly and crossover-hostile members can expect through November.
House Follow Path
Johnson’s Thursday statement compressed the House’s procedural timeline to roughly zero. If the Senate passes its merged text, the House Agriculture digital-assets subcommittee chairman said his chamber would move companion legislation rather than insist on a conference committee, removing weeks of delay. House Financial Services chair French Hill, who introduced the House version in May 2025, has previewed the same posture. Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s Securities Clarity Act and elements of the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act were folded into the House CLARITY text last year.
The practical implication: a Senate-passed bill could reach the president’s desk on a single House vote without conference reconciliation, provided the Senate text stays close enough to the House version that Hill and Emmer can whip it. The Blockchain Association’s BRCA preservation push earlier this month was aimed at exactly that constraint.
Timeline if Cloture Clears
The fastest path runs as follows: Senate floor debate opens under a unanimous-consent agreement or after a cloture motion, ethics and yield amendments are negotiated and either accepted or voted down individually, the merged text passes with 60 or more votes, the House takes up the Senate-passed bill under suspension rules, and the bill goes to the president. Under that compressed sequence, signing could land in mid-to-late July rather than the original July 4 target.
The slower path involves floor amendments that break the carefully assembled coalition, forcing a conference committee or a House-Senate ping-pong that pushes the bill past the August recess. Markets have priced meaningful odds of 2026 passage, with Galaxy’s research head cutting his estimate to 60% on June 8 and Polymarket-style prediction markets hovering near 70%.
The Recess Deadline
Failure to clear cloture before the August recess pushes the bill into a fall calendar that runs straight into November midterms. Legislating becomes harder as elections approach, and a delay into 2027 risks restarting the framework before a Congress whose composition is unknown. Republicans currently view the calendar between now and August as the only realistic window; the alternative is conceding the issue back to the next cycle.
Hagerty’s revived July 4 framing, even read as aspirational, sets the political clock. The Senate has limited floor days between now and the recess. The seven-Democrat math is gettable in principle and unsolved in practice, with crypto’s largest legislative bet of the cycle riding on a handful of amendments to ethics language nobody has finalized yet.
