This negotiation over the government conflict-of-interest piece had delayed progress on the Clarity Act for months — now potentially beyond the window in which it could most easily become law in 2026. This week’s release of the final working draft of Clarity included the first ethics language openly circulated, so Democrats are now responding — many of them with disdain.
“Donald Trump raked in more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures, and this bill does nothing to prevent him from vacuuming up his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is her party’s ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, referring to the crypto earnings Trump disclosed for 2025. She said the president will “simply ignore the law” as it’s proposed.
So what does the language do? It temporarily bans senior government officials (including the president, vice president, members of Congress and federal judges) from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies.
However, it excuses activity in the past, and there are plenty of crypto business pursuits that don’t check the boxes of issuance or sponsorship, so it’s unlikely Trump would be forced to abandon some of his most prominent ties, such as his ownership stake in World Liberty Financial. He might have to create some legal distance for himself, such as placing certain investments in trusts that he can’t access directly.
The first metric is the new “Net Reserve”, which currently sits at $36.6 billion. That figure takes Strategy’s $55.6 billion BTC reserve (843,775 BTC), adds $3.2 billion in USD reserves, then subtracts $6.8 billion in out-of-the-money convertible debt and $15.5 billion in notional preferred, the $22.3 billion in senior claims that rank ahead of common shareholders in any liquidation scenario.
The company has also updated its multiple to net asset value (mNAV) formula. Under the old accounting method, the accretion threshold would usually keep the company’s mNAV above 1.0x, making it increasingly difficult to know whether new share issuance was actually beneficial for existing holders. The new formula anchors that threshold permanently at 1.0x — if MSTR trades above it, issuing new shares adds BTC per share for all investors.
According to the company, the formula is: MSTR Price, divided by Net Bitcoin Per Share, representing whether MSTR trades above or below Net Bitcoin Per Share after debt and preferred claims.
The BTC Floor ARR is the minimum sustained BTC growth rate over the credit structure’s duration before restructuring becomes a consideration for the company. Currently, the BTC Breakeven ARR sits at 3.22%, meaning bitcoin only needs to appreciate faster than that rate annually for Strategy to fund all interest and dividend obligations through BTC gains alone, in perpetuity.
Strategy has also introduced new bitcoin market metrics, such as the premium to the 200-week moving average and the Fear and Greed Index.
Thailand’s crypto industry is facing fresh regulatory scrutiny after authorities accused Bitkub, one of the country’s largest digital asset exchanges, of providing false information to regulators.
Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a criminal complaint against Bitkub Online and two former directors over alleged false reporting connected to a 2021 cyberattack, the regulator announced on Thursday.
The complaint names former Bitkub directors Sakolkorn Sakavee and Thaweesap Rawan, who the SEC said were responsible for submitting company reports during the period under investigation.
The case comes as Bitkub’s parent company considers a potential public listing, putting renewed attention on transparency and governance at one of Thailand’s most prominent crypto businesses.
SEC alleges Bitkub failed to disclose impact of hack
The SEC said a cyberattack in May 2021 resulted in the theft of 16 types of digital assets from Bitkub, worth about 1.7 billion baht ($50 million).
The regulator alleged that Bitkub later replaced the stolen assets by Oct. 31, 2021, but failed to accurately reflect the impact of the incident in its daily net liquid capital reports.
According to the SEC, reports submitted between May 10 and Oct. 30, 2021, did not show a significant reduction in the exchange’s assets following the theft.
Former Bitkub directors Sakolkorn Sakavee (left) and Thaweesap Rawan. Source: Bangkok Post
The regulator alleged that the omission gave the impression that customer assets remained unchanged and that the exchange had not suffered losses from the attack.
The SEC accused Bitkub and the former directors of violating multiple provisions of Thailand’s digital asset regulations over the alleged false disclosures. The case will now proceed through investigation, possible prosecution and court proceedings.
Bitkub says disclosure delayed to prevent bank run
Bitkub disputed the SEC’s allegations in a post on X, saying the case stems from disclosure decisions made after the May 2021 cyberattack rather than fraudulent conduct. The exchange said it delayed disclosing the wallet compromise to prevent a bank run while it addressed the loss of the stolen assets.
The company said its co-founders later purchased equivalent digital assets to cover the stolen funds, leaving neither the company nor its customers with financial losses. The company added that it has since strengthened its governance, compliance and security systems.
Related: Bank of Thailand targets USDT and cash flows in gray money crackdown
Founded in 2018, Bitkub has emerged as one of the largest crypto exchanges in Thailand. According to CoinGecko, the platform ranks first among Thai crypto exchanges by trust score and had about $712 million in daily trading volume at publishing time.
Source: CoinGecko
In December 2025, Bitkub confirmed to Cointelegraph it was considering an initial public offering (IPO), including a potential listing in Hong Kong.
Cointelegraph reached out to Bitkub for additional comment on the SEC’s complaint and its IPO plans but had not received a response by publication.
Magazine: Binance & OKX users face $1,900 fines in Vietnam, Coinbase in China? Asia Express
Tokenized stocks may track the same Wall Street companies, but investors are not necessarily receiving the same trade.
Execution costs on a simulated $50,000 order differed sharply across major crypto exchanges, according to a CryptoRank study published Friday. Bitget’s Reality rTokens recorded slippage that was 45% to 58% lower than the next-lowest fully executable order book across the four stocks examined.
The results expose an emerging fault line in tokenized equities.
Platforms have largely marketed these products around fractional ownership, stablecoin funding and access beyond conventional market hours. The study suggests that liquidity and market structure may matter just as much as access.
Bitget Led the Large-Order Comparison
CryptoRank compared tokenized versions of Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Tesla across Bitget, Binance and Gate.
Those were the only four stocks that maintained valid two-sided order books across all three exchange programs during the test. The analysis covered Reality rTokens on Bitget, bStocks on Binance and gStocks on Gate.
Bitget delivered the lowest simulated slippage for $1,000, $10,000 and $50,000 orders across all four stocks, the report found.
For the $50,000 trades, estimated slippage on its rTokens ranged from 9.6 to 13.3 basis points. That was between 45% and 58% below the next-best fully executable venue, depending on the stock.
The advantage did not come entirely from narrower bid-ask spreads.
Binance’s bStocks produced the narrowest median spread for Nvidia and Tesla, while Bitget led for Microsoft and Meta. Bitget’s stronger performance on larger orders came from the volume available behind the best quoted price, according to the research.
Reality rTokens had the highest balanced displayed liquidity within 25 and 50 basis points of the midpoint across all four stocks. Median two-sided depth within 50 basis points ranged from about $169,000 to $192,000.
Median bid-ask spread by product and selected underlying
Median bid-ask spread by product and selected underlying. Image Source: cryptorank
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Why Execution Quality Matters
Slippage is the difference between the price visible when an order is placed and the average price at which it can actually be completed.
The cost is often negligible for small trades in liquid markets. It becomes more significant as order size grows or when an order book lacks enough buyers and sellers near the quoted price.
For a $50,000 transaction, even a relatively small difference in basis points can increase the investor’s effective entry or exit cost. Repeated across larger or more frequent trades, those differences can outweigh advertised trading fees.
The findings therefore challenge the idea that tokenized versions of the same stock are interchangeable.
A Tesla-linked token on one exchange may follow the same underlying Nasdaq-listed share as a token on another platform. However, each product trades on a separate order book, uses different market makers and may have a different mechanism for creating, redeeming or transferring tokens.
One-for-one backing alone does not guarantee that a token can be bought or sold efficiently, CryptoRank said. Transferability and accessible redemption routes also determine how quickly arbitrageurs can correct price differences.
The Test Was a Snapshot, Not a Permanent Ranking
The study carries important limitations.
CryptoRank based the comparison on displayed order books observed during a ten-minute window in regular US trading hours. The slippage figures were simulated rather than based on completed customer transactions, and trading fees were excluded.
Liquidity can change with market conditions, time of day and market-maker activity. The findings should therefore be viewed as a snapshot of executable capacity, rather than proof that one venue will always offer the lowest cost.
The limited sample also matters.
Only four stocks qualified for the cross-platform comparison. Other tokenized equities were excluded because they did not have valid two-sided books on every venue examined.
Still, the test illustrates how top-of-book prices can provide an incomplete view. A platform can show a competitive first quote while lacking enough depth to complete a larger order without moving the price.
Different Tokens Can Carry Different Rights
CryptoRank also found that matching stock tickers can hide materially different legal structures.
Reality rTokens provide contractual economic exposure but do not give holders ownership or voting rights in the underlying company. The report said each token is supported by an underlying security held through Alpaca, subject to independent reserve verification. Cash dividends are distributed in USDT.
Binance’s bStocks are structured as certificates under Abu Dhabi Global Market rules. They are backed by shares held in custody but do not confer direct ownership of those shares, according to Binance. Dividends are reinvested into the token structure.
Other products can take the form of secured notes, custodial entitlements or synthetic claims.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has similarly distinguished between securities tokenized by issuers and products created by unaffiliated third parties. The latter can include custodial claims and instruments that provide synthetic exposure rather than direct share ownership.
That means investors must evaluate two separate questions: how reliably a token follows the underlying stock and what enforceable claim the holder has if an intermediary fails.
The model combines Bitget’s exchange order book with broker-linked access to liquidity associated with the underlying US equity market. That structure can help replenish quotations during supported trading sessions, although the report cautioned that architecture alone cannot guarantee execution quality.
“Tokenization is moving beyond access and into infrastructure,” Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said in a statement shared with AlexaBlockchain.
“If even 10% of global financial assets become tokenized by 2030, we’ll witness one of the most significant transformations in modern capital markets,” Chen mentioned.
“The next phase of tokenization will be defined by quality of execution, liquidity and market infrastructure supporting those assets,” Chen added.
Bitget has expanded its Stock+ offering to more than 500 stock-linked assets, including equities and exchange-traded funds. Availability depends on the user’s jurisdiction and eligibility.
Tokenized Equities Approach a Bigger Market Test
The research comes as crypto exchanges race to expand their stock-linked offerings.
CryptoRank said tokenized equities had reached approximately $1.82 billion in distributed onchain value by mid-July, with another $21 million in represented assets. About 471,000 blockchain addresses held tokenized stocks at that point.
Those figures can vary considerably depending on which products and ownership structures a data provider includes. RWA.xyz currently reports a public-equities category of about $1.88 billion, 210,502 monthly active addresses and 718,050 holders.
Tokenized Stocks Market 24 July 2026. Image Source: RWA.xyz
The broader lesson is that issuing a blockchain representation of a stock does not automatically reproduce the quality of the underlying equity market.
Traditional US stocks benefit from consolidated pricing, multiple competing venues and deep institutional liquidity. Tokenized versions divide activity among separate exchanges, issuers, custodians and blockchain networks.
As the sector grows, platforms are likely to compete less on the number of stocks they list and more on measurable trading outcomes.
For investors, that will make order-book depth, redemption access, investor rights and all-in execution costs as important as the ticker displayed on the screen.
The above article “Tokenized Stock Trading Costs Diverge by Up to 58% Across Crypto Exchanges, Study Finds” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/tokenized-stock-trading-costs-diverge-by-up-to-58-percent-across-crypto-exchanges/
Read Also: This is the First U.S.-Chartered Depository Bank to Offer Stablecoin Invoicing
Disclaimer: The information provided on AlexaBlockchain is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Read complete disclaimer here.
India’s top cybercrime watchdog has ordered GitHub to take down Bitchat, the offline messaging app built by Block chief executive and bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey, as anti-government protesters in Delhi adopt mesh-networking tools to communicate through repeated internet shutdowns.
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, part of the Home Ministry, issued the order late Thursday under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, naming three GitHub repositories tied to Bitchat and giving the platform three hours to disable access.
The notice, reviewed by CoinDesk, says the app enables anonymous communication without registration, phone numbers or centralized logging, and that its architecture “significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies.”
Bitchat is a decentralized messaging app that relays encrypted messages between phones over Bluetooth mesh networks, requiring no internet, servers or accounts. Dorsey released it as open-source software in July 2025.
Bitchat is built to relay bitcoin transactions offline, passing them phone to phone through the mesh until a device with connectivity broadcasts them to the network, a design meant to keep payments alive during blackouts, disasters or state-imposed shutdowns.
Among others abandoning the treasury approach include Sequans Communications (SQNS), which sold 1,025 BTC before disposing of nearly 80% of its remaining holdings to repay convertible debt. It has ruled out further purchases and plans to monetize its remaining 658 BTC.
Nakamoto (NAKA), whose shares have fallen 99% since its May 2025 SPAC deal, sold around 284 BTC to raise $20 million for working capital following its acquisitions of BTC Inc. and UTXO Management. It sold roughly 40 BTC received through its derivatives program, according to VanEck’s Sigel. Almost 70% of its remaining 5,342 BTC were pledged against a Kraken loan maturing in December, creating what Sigel described as a potential binary event.
It’s not only specialist treasury companies that are reducing their holdings of the largest cryptocurrency. Crypto miners including Bitdeer and MARA Holdings are selling bitcoin to repurchase or repay debt and repurpose their energy-supply deals and computing resources to power AI data centers.
Other sellers include Empery Digital, which has reportedly sold almost half its bitcoin to finance buybacks and debt repayment, and Strategy, which has sold about 3,620 BTC in recent weeks and authorized additional sales to support its U.S. dollar reserves.
Strategy, which started the investment trend, remains the largest publicly listed holder of bitcoin, with more than 840,000 BTC. CEO Michael Sayler remains bullish.
Fintech firm Ripple made two moves on Thursday aimed at growing its dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, in a month when transfer volume across the token has dropped by 25%.
The first is Ripple Mint, a platform that lets institutional customers create, redeem, bridge and track RLUSD through a web dashboard or direct integration.
Until now, minting RLUSD — the process of issuing new tokens when a customer deposits dollars — generally meant arranging it directly with Ripple and waiting on a manual issuance process. The APIs let a firm trigger minting and redemption automatically from its own systems and track each transaction from dollar transfer to onchain settlement.
Ripple has also been extending RLUSD beyond the XRP Ledger and Ethereum onto the XRPL EVM sidechain, Base, Optimism, Ink and Unichain, widening the number of networks where the token can circulate.
Separately, Ripple announced late Thursday a strategic investment in Notabene. This compliance network places RLUSD inside its business-payments platform, putting the token in front of institutions positioned to send and receive it.
So, while Mint is designed to make RLUSD simple to create and manage, Notabene is built to get it moving through institutional payment rails.
BitMEX, the crypto derivatives exchange that invented the perpetual swap, faces a proposed class action suit alleging theft of bitcoin BTC$65,040.76 and insider trading filed the same day it said it would shut down in three months.
The lawsuit, filed by former tokenization project BKX Services and David Namdar in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, sees BKX claim it lost at least 305.81 BTC through forced liquidations, while Namdar alleges losses of more than 316.85 BTC — a total of 622.66 BTC ($40.7 million).
The July 23 filing came as BitMEX said it would close on Sept. 23, ending an 11-year run. Similar claims were made in a 2020 class-action case, which was closed in June 2025 without a ruling on the liquidation allegations.
The new complaint alleges BitMEX and co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed designed a system to retain customers’ collateral and transfer the remaining bitcoin to the platform’s insurance fund. It also says an internal trading desk had access to private customer information and could continue trading during server freezes that prevented other users from closing their positions.
Dogecoin fell 4.5% and ether dropped 2.5% on Friday, leading a broad but shallow retreat across the majors as the market consolidated a strong week, per CoinDesk data. XRP and Solana each slipped about 2.5%, while bitcoin held up better, down 0.6% to around $65,400.
The pullback barely dented the weekly picture. Bitcoin is still up 3% over seven days, ether 1.8%, and most majors remain green on the week, with Hyperliquid the exception at down 3.5%.
There was no single catalyst behind Friday’s move, more a pause after the run-up than a reversal.
