Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank and stablecoin infrastructure provider, has submitted a public comment letter supporting the US Treasury Department’s proposed Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and sanctions framework for the GENIUS Act, arguing that the rules largely strike the right balance between compliance and innovation.
In a letter published Wednesday, Anchorage said the proposed framework appropriately places AML obligations on regulated stablecoin issuers while urging Treasury to clarify secondary-market sanctions liability, enterprise-wide AML programs and correspondent account requirements.
Specifically, Anchorage argued that issuers should not face strict liability for failing to independently identify sanctioned users who transact on secondary markets through their smart contracts.
“A final rule that is clear and workable gives regulated institutions the certainty they need to build, and strengthens U.S. leadership in the next generation of payments and settlement infrastructure,” Anchorage said.
Source: Kevin Wysocki
The comments address Treasury rules proposed in April that would classify payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act, subjecting them to AML, customer due diligence and suspicious activity reporting requirements.
The proposal, jointly issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), would align stablecoin issuers with existing US anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance standards while imposing enhanced monitoring and recordkeeping obligations.
Related: Solana Institute CEO says CLARITY Act must shield open-source developers
Industry groups push for broader sanctions carveouts
Support for the proposed rulemaking has not been uniform across the crypto industry.
The lobbying arms of crypto derivatives exchange Hyperliquid and venture capital firm Paradigm recently submitted their own comment letter seeking greater clarity on secondary-market obligations, echoing Anchorage’s concerns but taking a more critical view of the proposal overall.
Source: Stefan Schropp
The groups argued that the current framework could impose sanctions obligations on issuers even when they lack a direct relationship with or visibility into users transacting on secondary markets.
“OFAC sweeps secondary market activity into the issuer’s compliance perimeter, treating smart contract interactions as an ongoing “provision of services” that carries sanctions liability regardless of whether the issuer has any relationship with, or visibility into, the transacting parties,” they said.
Related: SEC’s Peirce argues publishing DeFi code is protected speech
Fold Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLD), the bitcoin financial services company behind a suite of consumer rewards products, announced a series of capital transactions designed to eliminate secured debt, strengthen its balance sheet, and fund the next phase of its growth strategy.
The company monetized approximately $45 million in bitcoin at an average price of around $71,000 per coin, used $20 million of those proceeds to retire bitcoin-collateralized debt, and directed the remaining $25 million toward growth initiatives across its consumer and enterprise platforms.
The moves leave Fold debt-free on the secured side while preserving a bitcoin treasury of approximately 1,492 BTC — worth roughly $95 million at current prices.
Fold’s stock ripped to $1.50 in early trading, up over 130% on the day. Since then, the stock has fallen to under $1, up only 30% on the day.
The headline transaction is tied to a broader debt restructuring. Fold repaid approximately $66.3 million in convertible notes, a position it originally built in March 2025 when the company added 475 BTC to its treasury through those same instruments. Retiring the debt released 521 BTC that had been locked up as collateral, giving management more flexibility over the company’s bitcoin holdings going forward.
“We have reduced financing risk, strengthened our balance sheet, and ensured that short-term market volatility cannot stand in the way of executing our roadmap,” said Will Reeves, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “As we approach several product launches, we believe Fold is entering one of the most important growth periods in the company’s history.”
Fold’s credit card and new products
Fold’s flagship product, its Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card, sits at the center of management’s growth thesis.
The debt elimination removes monthly cash interest payments from the expense base and, in Reeves’ framing, gives the company the financing flexibility to support a larger cardholder base and pursue funding relationships that participate in the card program’s economics as it scales.
The company also has a $45 million revolving credit facility backed by bitcoin collateral and a $250 million equity purchase facility aimed at future bitcoin accumulation — instruments that reflect the corporate treasury playbook Fold has committed to since going public on February 19, 2025, through a SPAC merger with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp.
The restructuring arrives against a backdrop of genuine business momentum. Fold’s fiscal year 2025 revenue reached $31.8 million, a 34% increase year-over-year, driven by transaction volume of nearly $960 million for the period.
Since launching in 2019, the company has processed more than $2 billion in total transactions and distributed over $45 million in bitcoin rewards to users, the company said.
The combination of a debt-free balance sheet, a functioning revenue engine, and a treasury that retains exposure to bitcoin appreciation gives Fold a capital structure that management argues is designed for the current environment — one where bitcoin-native financial products are gaining traction with both consumers and institutional financing partners.
“Over the past year, we’ve built one of the strongest product roadmaps in our history,” Reeves said. “Increased liquidity and lower debt ensure we have the resources and flexibility to execute our plans during this pivotal moment for Fold.”
Swiss digital asset infrastructure firm Taurus has partnered with P2P.org to let banks and financial institutions access staking services directly through Taurus’ custody platform.
The integration will start with Ethereum.
Taurus said clients using Taurus-PROTECT, its custody platform for banks and regulated institutions, will be able to stake ETH through a native integration with Ethereum’s Beacon Chain deposit contract.
The partnership also gives clients access to validator operations across other proof-of-stake networks, including Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, NEAR, Cardano and Tezos.
The move is aimed at banks that already custody digital assets but want to generate protocol rewards without moving assets into separate staking workflows.
Under the arrangement, clients retain control of their assets while delegating validator operations to P2P.org. Rewards are determined by the underlying blockchain protocol, rather than by Taurus or P2P.org.
“We are pleased to partner with P2P.org to provide institutional staking services through Taurus-PROTECT,” said Clémentine Drouot, Head of Taurus-NETWORK Partnerships at Taurus. “This collaboration reflects our commitment to providing financial institutions with secure, compliant, and scalable access to staking services, while supporting the operational and governance standards that banks require.”
P2P.org operates non-custodial validator infrastructure for institutional staking. It secures more than $10 billion in delegated assets across more than 50 proof-of-stake networks and has had no slashing incidents across 7 years of operations.
Staking allows holders of proof-of-stake assets to participate in network validation and earn rewards. On Ethereum, validators help store data, process transactions and add blocks to the chain after depositing ETH into the staking system.
But for regulated financial institutions, the technical process is only one part of the problem.
Banks also need custody controls, governance approvals, reporting, validator monitoring, risk management and regulatory clarity. A staking product that sits outside existing custody infrastructure can create operational friction and new compliance questions.
The Taurus-P2P.org partnership is designed to reduce that friction.
“Institutional adoption of staking depends on infrastructure that meets the operational, security, and governance requirements of regulated financial institutions,” Alexander Loktev, CRO of P2P.org, mentioned in a statement shared with AlexaBlockchain.
“By integrating with Taurus, we enable banks and financial institutions worldwide to access institutional-grade staking services directly within the digital asset platform they already use, reducing operational complexity and accelerating time-to-market,” Alexander added.
Taurus has become one of the more visible Swiss digital asset infrastructure providers for banks.
In 2023, Deutsche Bank partnered with Taurus to use its custody and tokenization technology for cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets and digital currencies.
In 2023, Taurus also raised $65 million in a Series B funding round led by Credit Suisse, with participation from Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group and Arab Bank Switzerland.
In 2024, State Street partnered with Taurus to offer digital asset services, including crypto custody and tokenization support for asset-management clients.
The new staking integration comes as banks and institutional custodians expand beyond basic storage.
Staking has increasingly become part of the institutional crypto stack, alongside custody, trading, settlement, tokenization and governance.
Coinbase Prime, for example, offers institutions custody, trading, financing and staking in one platform. Coinbase and Figment also expanded institutional staking access in 2025, allowing Prime clients to use Figment infrastructure without moving assets out of Coinbase custody.
Anchorage Digital has taken a similar route in the United States. The federally chartered crypto bank offers staking from custody and added institutional Solana staking through Marinade Finance in 2026.
BitGo has also marketed staking from qualified custody or self-custody, with integrated reporting and validator support.
The pattern is clear. Institutions do not want staking as a standalone crypto-native workflow. They want it embedded into regulated custody, with audit trails, permissioning, reporting and validator oversight.
The partnership also broadens Taurus’ staking options after its earlier institutional staking collaboration with Everstake. That deal gave Taurus clients access to staking across networks including Solana, NEAR, Cardano and Tezos.
The P2P.org integration adds another validator provider to Taurus’ institutional network and places Ethereum at the center of the offering.
The timing is also relevant for Europe.
The EU’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) has created a more defined framework for crypto-asset service providers. The European Securities and Markets Authority has said staking services are linked to custody when client assets or private keys are held by the provider, meaning firms offering such services must be authorized for custody and administration of crypto-assets.
That makes custody-native staking more important for banks.
It does not eliminate risk. Staking can involve validator downtime, slashing, liquidity constraints, smart contract risk and changing protocol economics. Rewards also fluctuate based on network conditions and are not fixed yields.
Still, the integration shows where institutional digital asset infrastructure is moving.
Banks are no longer looking only for secure crypto storage. They increasingly want ways to put held assets to work while staying inside governance and compliance frameworks they already use.
The above article “Banks Get Direct Access to Ethereum, Solana Staking Through Taurus Custody” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/banks-get-direct-access-to-ethereum-solana-staking-through-taurus-custody/
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If bitcoin and Ethereum had been invented on the same day, nobody would have heard of bitcoin. I sold every bitcoin Bit Digital held and deployed the proceeds into Ethereum. I have built one of the largest corporate Ethereum treasury positions in the world and said, on the record, that we will never sell it. People have asked me to articulate the single strongest argument for that conviction. On March 30, 2026, that argument arrived. Last month, Citi confirmed it.
In a research note published on May 18, Citi analysts warned that quantum computing advances have shortened the timeline for practical attacks on digital assets, and reached a conclusion that should give every institutional bitcoin holder pause: bitcoin faces significantly greater quantum risk than Ethereum, and the gap between them comes down not just to technology but to governance.
That finding echoes the landmark paper released in late March by Google Quantum AI in collaboration with Stanford University and the Ethereum Foundation, which found that the computing resources required to break bitcoin’s foundational cryptography are approximately 20 times lower than previously estimated. A sufficiently advanced quantum computer, operating with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, could derive a bitcoin private key from its public key in roughly nine minutes. That machine does not exist today. But the window to act responsibly is narrowing faster than most institutions realize. When Google raises the alarm, and Citi confirms it in the same quarter, this is no longer a fringe concern. This is the silver bullet. And it points directly at bitcoin.
Why bitcoin is exposed
Bitcoin’s security rests on elliptic curve digital signature algorithms. When you spend bitcoin, your public key is briefly exposed onchain. Under classical computing, reversing that to obtain a private key is infeasible. Quantum computers running Shor’s algorithm can, in principle, do exactly that during the brief window a transaction is broadcast. The Google paper doesn’t merely confirm this theoretically; it quantifies it with a precision that removes comfortable ambiguity.
Nic Carter, co-founder of Coin Metrics and one of the sharpest minds in digital assets, has been sounding this alarm for months. In a series of essays beginning in October 2025, Carter called quantum computing “the biggest long-term risk to bitcoin’s core cryptography” and accused developers of “sleepwalking towards collapse.” He estimates a quantum computer could meaningfully break elliptic curve cryptography as early as 2028. Approximately 6.9 million BTC could be vulnerable at a sufficient quantum scale, including legacy wallets and Taproot outputs, which already represented more than 21% of all bitcoin transactions in 2025.
Bitcoin’s governance problem
One might ask: can’t bitcoin simply upgrade? Yes, in theory. In practice, this is where the risk compounds.
Bitcoin’s governance is intentionally conservative and consensus-driven, which makes it extraordinarily slow. SegWit took roughly 8.5 years from conception to widespread adoption. Taproot took approximately 7.5 years. The current quantum proposals, BIP-360 and BIP-361, are still at the draft or early testnet stage as of 2026. A full base-layer transition to post-quantum signatures would be the most contentious change bitcoin has ever attempted. As Carter documented, most bitcoin Core developers have expressed limited concern about urgency, a disposition that is, at minimum, a serious governance liability for any institution holding bitcoin in treasury. A quantum breakthrough does not politely wait for committee consensus.
Ethereum has already acted
This is where the picture diverges sharply. Ethereum’s approach to quantum resistance is not a reactive scramble. It is a structured road map already in execution, built on the NIST post-quantum cryptography standards finalized in August 2024.
The Pectra upgrade, which shipped on Ethereum mainnet in May 2025, introduced EIP-7702, a critical stepping stone toward full account abstraction. Rather than requiring a single network-wide hard fork, Ethereum’s architecture allows individual accounts to choose their own signature verification and switch to quantum-safe signatures voluntarily. The upcoming Hegotá hard fork, planned for the second half of 2026, embeds this further at the protocol level. The Ethereum Foundation has set structured milestones targeting completion of core post-quantum infrastructure by approximately 2029, with active interop devnets already running across multiple clients.
The contrast with bitcoin’s governance paralysis could not be more stark. Ethereum was designed, in ways bitcoin simply was not, to accommodate exactly this kind of foundational upgrade. That is not an accident. It is architecture.
The institutional calculus
For corporate treasurers and sovereign wealth managers, quantum risk is no longer a tail scenario to be footnoted and dismissed. Governments are already treating it as operational. U.S. federal agencies faced an April 2026 deadline to submit post-quantum cryptography transition plans under National Security Memorandum 10. The EU has set a 2030 quantum-resistance target for critical infrastructure. The G7 Cyber Expert Group published a coordinated financial sector road map in January 2026. This compliance architecture will, over time, extend to digital asset treasury holdings.
The question for any institution holding bitcoin is whether they are comfortable with an asset whose quantum-resistance road map is still in draft, whose governance moves at geological speed, and whose developer community is divided on whether urgency is even warranted.
The question for any institution considering Ethereum is whether they want the asset with a structured, transparent, and already in motion upgrade path.
Ethereum is the more adaptive, more capable, and more durable asset. I have put the balance sheet of a Nasdaq-listed company behind that conviction. The Google paper is what finally gives that conviction a single, undeniable, technically grounded answer to the hardest question in digital asset treasury strategy: which asset is built to last?
Ethereum is not a perfect asset. No asset is. But in the context of quantum risk, it is the asset whose architecture was built to survive what is coming. If Carter and Google are right, that distinction will matter enormously, and sooner than most people expect.
Bitcoin (BTC) faced renewed risks of a breakdown toward $30,000, according to a new analysis, as institutional demand turned deeply negative.
Key takeaways:
Data shows institutions are offloading around 450% of the daily BTC supply.
Bitcoin risks slipping below $30,000 if supply absorption remains weak.
Institutions are selling almost 2,000 BTC per day
Capriole Investments’ institutional buying model, which tracks Bitcoin demand from ETFs, corporate treasuries, and miner issuance, shows net institutional selling at around 450% of daily mined supply, equivalent to about 2,000 BTC per day.
BTC/USD vs institutional buying market cap. Source: Capriole Investments
In other words, large holders are selling 4-5x more Bitcoin than is mined each day.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs appear to be the biggest drag. Their flow line has fallen sharply below zero, suggesting ETF outflows are now overwhelming other sources of demand.
In the past month, for instance, these funds have witnessed nearly $27 billion in withdrawals, according to data resource Glassnode.
US Bitcoin Spot ETFs net balances vs. BTC price. Source: Glassnode
That marks a sharp reversal from the 2024–2025 trend, when ETF inflows helped push Bitcoin toward record highs.
Strategy’s slowdown is a weak spot
Michael Saylor’s Strategy helped anchor Bitcoin’s institutional demand earlier in 2026, buying 89,599 BTC in Q1 alone.
The company kept buying into Q2, adding roughly 62,300 BTC through late May, including a major 24,869 BTC purchase in mid-May. That lifted its holdings above 843,000 BTC.
Bitcoin price with Strategy purchases. Source: StrategyTracker.COM
The accumulation coincided with BTC’s roughly 40% rebound from its 2026 low of $59,930, reinforcing the view that corporate treasury demand remained one of the market’s strongest pillars during the recovery.
However, its latest buying has slowed sharply, with only a 1,550 BTC purchase in early June after a small 32 BTC sale to fund preferred-stock dividends.
Related: Why Strategy’s 32 Bitcoin sale became a bigger crypto debate
Strategy’s latest purchases are running well below its Q1 and early Q2 pace, and they barely cover ETF-led selling pressure, which Capriole’s model estimates at roughly 2,000 BTC per day.
Bitcoin may slip toward $30,000 or lower, analyst warns
BTC’s latest leg down could match its previous 36%–39% declines, putting the next downside target in the $49,000–$53,000 range, according to analyst CryptoBullet.
That zone may act as initial support, but analyst Jelle’s Fibonacci model suggests it may not mark the final bear-market floor.
In a Wednesday post, he noted that every BTC bear market has dropped well below its 0.618 Fibonacci retracement before bottoming. Previously, BTC fell 65% below the 0.618 level in 2014–2015, 59% in 2018 and 44% in 2022.
With Bitcoin’s current 0.618 retracement near $57,000–$58,000, even a repeat of the shallower 2022 drawdown would imply a potential bottom near $32,000.
Deeper 2018-style and 2015-style drawdowns would point toward $23,000–$24,000 and $20,000, respectively.
The White House is stepping into one of the most sensitive fights in US crypto policy.
Administration officials are expected to meet law-enforcement groups today (June 10, 2026) to discuss concerns over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
The talks come at a critical moment for the bill.
The agenda is expected to focus on law-enforcement objections to developer protections and illicit-finance provisions in the CLARITY Act. Those issues could determine whether the bill remains a broad crypto market-structure framework or becomes a narrower package with tougher obligations for decentralized finance participants.
The meeting also comes as more than 200 crypto companies and industry groups urge Senate leadership to move the legislation toward a floor vote.
That lobbying push reflects a familiar calculation in Washington.
Crypto has momentum, but not yet enough certainty.
The CLARITY Act has already cleared the Senate Banking Committee. According to the Senate Banking Committee, the bill advanced in a 15-9 vote in May, marking one of the most significant steps yet for US digital asset market-structure legislation.
But the bill still faces a higher bar on the Senate floor.
It will likely need 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles. That makes the White House meeting more than a routine policy discussion.
It is a test of whether crypto firms, law-enforcement agencies, banking interests and Senate negotiators can settle the remaining language before the legislative window narrows.
What the meeting is about
The White House meeting is expected to focus on one of the most contentious parts of the CLARITY Act: how far legal protections should extend for non-custodial software developers and decentralized infrastructure providers.
Those provisions are central to the crypto industry’s support for the bill.
Developers argue that writing open-source code, building self-custody tools or publishing decentralized protocols should not automatically make them brokers, exchanges, money transmitters or financial intermediaries.
Law-enforcement officials have a different concern.
They worry that broad exemptions could create blind spots for money laundering, sanctions evasion, ransomware payments and other illicit-finance risks.
That is the core tension.
Crypto advocates want clear legal protection for builders who do not custody customer assets or control user transactions. Law-enforcement groups want assurance that the bill does not make it harder to pursue bad actors using decentralized systems.
According to the CLARITY Act text published by the Senate Banking Committee, the bill is designed to create a system for regulating the offer and sale of digital commodities by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
But the hardest part is not only defining assets.
It is defining responsibility.
The discussion is also expected to cover the bill’s illicit-finance provisions.
Under the CLARITY Act framework, digital commodity intermediaries would face compliance duties. Those could include anti-money-laundering requirements and obligations tied to customer protection.
But the harder question is how those duties apply to decentralized platforms, front-end interfaces, wallet software and protocol developers.
That’s important.
If the final text treats too many software providers as financial intermediaries, DeFi development in the US could face higher legal risk. If the text is too loose, critics will argue Congress is creating an enforcement gap.
Today’s meeting is therefore about language, but also about the allocation of legal responsibility.
Who is responsible when a user interacts with open-source code? Who must monitor flows? Who is exempt because they do not control assets? Who remains liable because they operate a front end, collect fees or exercise governance influence?
Those are no longer theoretical questions.
They will decide how much of DeFi can operate inside a US regulatory perimeter and how much migrates offshore.
Why the CLARITY Act matters for crypto
The CLARITY Act is the most consequential US crypto market-structure bill now moving through Congress.
Its basic aim is to define when digital assets fall under the SEC and when they fall under the CFTC.
That distinction has shaped nearly every major crypto-policy dispute in the US.
For years, crypto companies have argued that the SEC has relied too heavily on enforcement actions rather than clear rules. The SEC, in turn, has argued that many token offerings and trading platforms already fall under securities laws.
The CLARITY Act attempts to resolve that fight by creating a statutory framework.
It would define categories of digital assets, set disclosure obligations, create registration pathways and outline when digital assets can be treated as commodities rather than securities.
According to Elliptic, which tracks crypto regulation and illicit-finance risk, the Senate Banking Committee’s passage of the CLARITY Act was a key step toward a possible full Senate vote. Elliptic also noted that prior negotiations had already focused on disputes between crypto firms and the banking industry, including whether intermediaries should be allowed to offer yield on stablecoin holdings.
That fight shows why the bill matters beyond crypto exchanges.
It could shape stablecoin rewards, tokenized assets, custody, broker-dealer obligations, DeFi interfaces and institutional infrastructure.
The bill is not only about compliance for the crypto industry. It is about business planning.
Without clearer rules, exchanges, wallet providers, token issuers, stablecoin firms and institutional infrastructure companies must make long-term decisions under legal uncertainty.
Marcos Viriato, CEO and co-founder of Parfin, said the industry push behind the bill reflects a broader cost of policy ambiguity.
“The growing industry support for the CLARITY Act highlights a broader challenge facing digital asset markets: uncertainty is becoming more costly than regulation itself,” Viriato said.
“Banks and financial institutions can adapt to regulation – that’s what they do. The bigger challenge is investing in the right infrastructure, building products, and allocating resources when the long-term regulatory environment remains unclear.”
That point is especially relevant for institutions.
Large banks, asset managers and payment companies are unlikely to build at scale around digital assets if they do not know which regulator governs the activity, what disclosures are required, or which products could later be challenged.
“As digital finance matures, the conversation is increasingly moving beyond whether digital assets should be regulated and towards how they can be adopted at scale,” Viriato said. “Regulatory clarity gives institutions the confidence to move from experimentation to implementation.”
The argument is that crypto regulation is no longer just about token speculation.
It is about tokenized deposits, stablecoin payments, settlement infrastructure, institutional custody, real-world asset markets and programmable finance.
“The opportunity for the US is significant, but infrastructure decisions do not pause for legislative timelines,” Viriato said. “The real challenge is no longer defining the rules. It’s building the infrastructure that allows institutions to operate within them.”
That is also why the bill’s developer protections have become so important.
They could determine whether US-based builders are comfortable launching self-custody, wallet, DeFi, infrastructure and blockchain middleware products domestically.
If the protections survive largely intact, the US could become more attractive for crypto software development.
If they are narrowed sharply, the industry may get market-structure clarity for centralized platforms while leaving DeFi exposed to continued enforcement risk.
Politics are now part of the market-structure debate
The CLARITY Act has become one of the highest-profile crypto issues in Washington.
Senator Cynthia Lummis, a long-time supporter of digital asset legislation, pressed the urgency in public posts on X on June 8.
“I did not spend years on this issue to watch another country write the rules that govern the assets Americans invented. Let’s pass the Clarity Act,” Lummis wrote.
In another post, she added: “The Clarity Act passed committee. The floor is next. We did not come this far to quit at the 5 yard line.”
I did not spend years on this issue to watch another country write the rules that govern the assets Americans invented. Let’s pass the Clarity Act.
— Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) June 8, 2026
That message captures the industry’s fear.
If the bill does not move this session, the US risks another delay while other jurisdictions continue building crypto regimes. The European Union has already implemented its Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, known as MiCA. Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and other markets have also moved ahead with clearer digital-asset rules in parts of the sector.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has framed the issue as unusually bipartisan.
“The most bipartisan issue right now in DC in my view and there is just a lot of people on both sides of the aisle not to mention 50 million americans who’ve used crypto there’s about 3 million advocates who signed up to stand with crypto.org who you know wanted to elect pro crypto candidates so there’s a big movement behind this of people who just want to see clear rules on the books,” Armstrong said in a podcast with Dasha Burns on TheConversation.
That political base is one reason the bill has advanced this far. But it does not remove the obstacles.
Democrats have raised concerns about anti-money-laundering rules, consumer protection and potential conflicts of interest involving political figures and crypto ventures. Banking groups have also fought provisions tied to stablecoin rewards, warning that yield-like products could pull deposits away from traditional lenders.
Galaxy Research, in a May analysis of the Senate Banking text, said the odds of CLARITY Act passage in 2026 had improved after committee negotiations and compromise language. But it also noted that the bill’s prospects remained highly dependent on the next stages of the Senate process.
The policy push is unfolding against a weaker crypto market.
Bitcoin was trading at $60,999 on June 10 (at the time of writing), down 2.56% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. CoinMarketCap data also showed Bitcoin’s market capitalization near $1.22 trillion and 24-hour trading volume above $36 billion.
Bitcoin was trading at $60,999 on June 10, down 2.56% over 24 hours. Image Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin is roughly 50% below its all-time high of $126,198.
It’s important because the CLARITY Act debate is no longer happening during a euphoric bull market.
Bitcoin remains far below its 2025 highs. Crypto equities have also been volatile. ETF flows have softened, and investors are weighing macro pressure, regulatory uncertainty and competition from other speculative assets.
Bitcoin had fallen sharply from its peak and that capital was moving toward large private-market and technology opportunities, including the SpaceX IPO.
That broader risk rotation is worth noting.
Crypto is competing for investor capital against AI stocks, private-market tech offerings and traditional equities. At the same time, the sector is trying to persuade Washington that clearer rules could help keep digital-asset infrastructure inside the US.
A weaker market can cut both ways for legislation.
It may reduce political urgency if lawmakers view crypto as less systemically important. But it may also strengthen the case for clearer rules, especially if policymakers believe uncertainty is contributing to capital outflows and weaker domestic investment.
The industry’s argument is that market cycles should not dictate rulemaking.
Clearer laws are needed in bull markets and bear markets alike.
For institutional players, the timing may be even more important.
Infrastructure investment often happens before retail enthusiasm returns. Custody systems, tokenized asset platforms, payment rails and compliance technology require long planning cycles.
That is why Viriato’s point about infrastructure decisions not pausing for Congress is central to the current debate.
Capital can wait. Engineering teams often cannot.
What to watch next?
The first thing to watch is whether the White House meeting produces compromise language on developer protections.
If law-enforcement groups secure narrower exemptions, the bill may become more acceptable to skeptical senators. But that could weaken industry support from DeFi advocates and infrastructure developers.
The second issue is illicit finance.
Any revised text will need to show that the bill does not create safe harbors for criminal abuse. Expect lawmakers to focus on sanctions compliance, money laundering, ransomware and the obligations of platforms that have practical control over user access.
The third issue is the vote count.
The bill has committee momentum, but floor math is different. Senate leadership will need enough support to move it through procedural barriers, and some senators who backed the committee process may still demand changes before final passage.
The fourth issue is timing.
The longer negotiations drag on, the more the bill competes with other Senate priorities. That is why the industry letter from more than 200 organizations is important. It is designed to create urgency before the window narrows further.
The fifth issue is whether the House and Senate can reconcile competing versions if the Senate passes its bill.
Market-structure legislation is complex. Even after a Senate vote, final passage would still require alignment with the House and then presidential approval.
At the moment, the White House meeting is the next pressure point.
It will not decide the entire future of US crypto regulation. But it could decide whether the CLARITY Act moves forward as a broad compromise or becomes another bill slowed by the same unresolved questions that have defined US crypto policy for years.
The stakes are unusually clear.
The US is trying to write rules for a market it helped create, while the market itself is already moving.
The above article “White House Holds CLARITY Act Meeting Today as DeFi Rules Face Scrutiny” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/white-house-holds-clarity-act-meeting-today-as-defi-rules-face-scrutiny/
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Botanix, a Bitcoin scaling network that set out to bring “real utility” to BTC without token incentives, is winding down after four years in operation.
In a Tuesday post on X, Botanix told users to withdraw all Bitcoin and other assets by July 9, after which remaining assets will be swept and “be unrecoverable.”
The decision comes despite integrations with major crypto infrastructure providers, including Chainlink, Fireblocks and Galaxy, and the launch of a consumer-facing Bitcoin neobank app.
Botanix’s Spiderchain architecture combines an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chain with proof-of-stake-style consensus.
That structure allowed it to offer Ethereum-like programmability for Bitcoin while relying on a set of validators and a dynamic federation, rather than purely on Bitcoin’s own consensus for security and settlement.
In its shutdown notice, the team said the technology and products worked but failed to achieve sustainable product-market fit or economics.
Botanix shut-down notice. Source: Botanix
Botanix said most users still treat Bitcoin primarily as a reserve asset and yield vehicle rather than something they want to use frequently in onchain applications, and that existing demand for Bitcoin-backed decentralized finance (DeFi) is largely being met by wrapped BTC on Ethereum.
Related: Bitcoin payments held back by tax policy, not scaling tech: Crypto exec
The team also cited a broader concentration of attention and trading volume on large exchanges, trading platforms and traditional financial intermediaries, which left infrastructure-heavy networks like Botanix struggling to generate enough fee revenue to cover their costs.
Users have until July 9 to withdraw assets
Botanix has warned that anyone who does not remove their Bitcoin and other assets by July 9 will lose access, highlighting the practical risks for retail users when experimental DeFi platforms are wound down.
The shutdown comes as other projects seek to extend Bitcoin’s programmability, including Stacks and Rootstock, which operate independent blockchains linked to Bitcoin, and newer efforts such as Citrea that use different mixes of Bitcoin anchoring, proof-of-stake-style designs and token incentives
Citrea co-founder and chief executive Orkun Mahir Kılıç told Cointelegraph Botanix’s experience is less an indictment of Bitcoin DeFi than of “a cloning-first approach” that largely replicated existing EVM protocols without offering long-term BTC holders a distinct value proposition.
He argued that Citrea is instead focused on applications that “fundamentally require Bitcoin’s specific architecture and trust-minimized settlement,” rather than competing as one more general-purpose chain, pointing to use cases like private payments and Bitcoin-native capital markets rather than generic lending and trading forks.
Cointelegraph reached out to Botanix for comment but did not receive a response by publication.
Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter Brandt
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed its first prediction markets regulation on Wednesday, pitching an approach to how it can make widespread evaluations of whether contracts trip the federal standard for what’s off-limits.
The agency that regulates U.S. derivatives has been a defender of prediction markets such as those run by Kalshi, Polymarket and Crypto.com, with Chairman Mike Selig making them a top legal and regulatory priority for the CFTC. He’s been promising a new, tailored regulatory regime for the industry, and the new proposal addresses part of what may be multiple rules pursued by the regulator.
“The CFTC will protect the integrity of our regulated markets without standing in the way of responsible innovation,” Selig said in a statement. “This proposal gives the commission a durable, transparent framework to identify the contracts Congress directed us to scrutinize while letting legitimate markets move forward.”
Federal law holds that contracts involving war, terrorism, assassination, illegal activity and gaming can be deemed outside of the public interest and not allowed. In practice and in its recent embrace of data-sharing agreements with professional sports leagues, the CFTC has embraced the massively growing field of sports betting as an apparent public interest.
The platforms on which event contracts are traded are regulated exchanges under the CFTC, and the agency has said that exchanges are the first line of defence in determining whether contracts are legal and markets aren’t manipulated or abused.
The proposal weighs a 90-day review process on public-interest determinations for individual contracts.
President Donald Trump has recently expressed support for the track Selig has been on, saying in a social-media post that “Other Countries are after this new form of Financial Market, and we want to remain at the top.”
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is bringing cryptocurrency payments to its global tournament circuit by teaming up with the Solana Foundation.
The world’s largest and most prestigious poker tournament series will allow players to use Solana-based payments, powered by MoonPay, to buy into tournaments with no processing fees, starting at the WSOP in Las Vegas.
Blockchain-based payments will then expand at WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas this December, where winners will have the option to receive payouts in stablecoins on Solana.
The move marks a noteworthy integration of blockchain-based payments into a major live sporting and gaming event, potentially streamlining cross-border transactions for the WSOP’s international player base.
WSOP CEO Ty Stewart said this aims to modernize payments for players. “We are incredibly proud to bring such an innovative and passionate community into the fold,” Stewart said. “Solana’s ecosystem, like the WSOP, constantly challenges conventions and remains laser-focused on the consumer experience.”
Read more: Solana is shedding its memecoin reputation as big banks move billions into its ecosystem
