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📰 TOP NEWS
Clarity Act misses August 7 deadline as Senate majority leader signals floor vote unlikely before recess
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is unlikely to reach a Senate floor vote before the August recess, Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated Thursday, dealing a blow to crypto industry hopes for 2026 passage. Thune said he would like to "at least get Clarity started" before lawmakers leave town, which could preserve a narrow window for the bill to advance during the brief September session, though election politics and competing legislative priorities will loom large. The immediate Senate floor priority will instead be a bipartisan sanctions bill championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt pushed back on Thune's assessment, saying he was "perplexed" and pointing to the first week of August as still available for potential action, though he agreed a final vote in July is unlikely. The bill has faced a contentious reception since a new working draft emerged this week, with Democrats broadly opposing its ethics provisions, which bar public officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets but exclude other family members and include a sunset clause expiring in January 2029. Some Republican senators have also raised concerns over stablecoin yield treatment. Dragging the bill into the later months of the year sharply reduces its odds of passage in 2026, as the House would still need to pass the Senate's version after the Senate acts, all ahead of November midterm elections.
Nine major Bitcoin firms launch $15 million security consortium focused on post-quantum cryptography
A group of nine companies including Strategy, BlackRock, Coinbase, Galaxy, Fidelity Digital Assets, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, and Blockstream have formed the Bitcoin Security Consortium, pledging $15 million over three years to fund developers and researchers working on Bitcoin security, with post-quantum cryptography as its first area of focus. Each member firm will direct its own capital independently to organizations of its choosing, with day-to-day activities coordinated by Brink Executive Director Mike Schmidt in a volunteer capacity. The consortium said it will not develop or govern Bitcoin's protocol or speak on behalf of Bitcoin developers, leaving protocol development to the network's decentralized open-source community. The launch comes as quantum computing preparations accelerate across the industry and government, with Galaxy this week committing up to $5 million in developer grants for post-quantum cryptographic tools, and President Trump last month signing two executive orders pushing for full post-quantum cryptography migration for federal high-value assets by the end of 2031. Project Eleven, a startup focused on post-quantum security, warned in May that roughly 6.9 million bitcoins could be at risk under certain quantum computing scenarios, pegging the potential arrival of computers capable of breaking modern encryption — known as "Q-Day" — as early as 2030.
SEC agrees to pay $150,000 to settle FOIA lawsuit over Ethereum investigations brought on behalf of Coinbase
The SEC agreed to pay $150,000 in legal fees and produce remaining responsive documents to settle a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over its investigations into Ethereum, filed by History Associates on behalf of Coinbase in June 2024. The lawsuit had sought records on SEC investigations into Zachary Coburn and Enigma MPC, as well as documents relating to how Ethereum transitioned from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, with the court explicitly ordering the agency to prioritize records involving then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler concerning that migration. The case took a significant turn in September 2025 when the SEC's Inspector General reported that Gensler's text messages from October 2022 to September 2023 had been accidentally deleted, with later court updates revealing the agency had wiped 21 phones belonging to top officials, five of which belonged to staff members targeted in the Coinbase case. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tied the outcome to a separate FDIC case, writing that "the Gensler SEC deleted texts at the height of the anti-crypto campaign, FDIC buried evidence — it was all uncovered after we fought to expose the truth." The settlement brings to a close more than two years of litigation, with the case to be formally dismissed once the SEC completes production of the remaining records.
BitMEX to permanently shut down on Sept. 23, ending 11-year run as pioneer of crypto perpetual swaps
BitMEX announced it will permanently close its exchange on September 23, ending an 11-year run for the platform that co-founder Arthur Hayes launched in 2014 with the mission of bringing professional-grade crypto derivatives to retail traders. The perpetual swap BitMEX pioneered has since become the most traded product in crypto, adopted across thousands of venues. The board of HDR Global Trading Limited reached the closure decision following a strategic review after the exchange had been seeking a buyer since February 2025, retaining Broadhaven Capital Partners to run a sale process. New account registrations stopped immediately. The closure follows a turbulent period for the exchange, which pleaded guilty in 2024 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act over an inadequate anti-money laundering program and was hit with an additional $100 million fine in January 2025, before President Trump pardoned its co-founders in March 2025. Users have until August 26 to open new positions, after which only reduce-only trades will be permitted ahead of a force-close of all remaining open positions at shutdown. KYC'd users who fail to withdraw by the closure date will be charged a monthly fee of $50 equivalent or 1% per annum on remaining balances. BitMEX said assets exceed liabilities and that it has lost zero customer funds to hacks across its full operating history.
🎟️ EVENT OF THE WEEK
ETHGlobal Lisbon 2026
ETHGlobal Lisbon 2026 is gathering the Ethereum ecosystem’s most ambitious developers and builders at Pavilhão Carlos Lopes for 36 hours of creation under pressure.
Date Jul 24-26 2026
💬 EXPERT OPINION
I do think some digital currency will end up being the reserve currency of the world. I see a path where that's going to happen.”
📊 METRIC OF THE WEEK
Our researchers designed this metric with ❤️
GLOSSARY CORNER Quantum Computing Risk in crypto refers to the threat that sufficiently powerful quantum computers could break the cryptographic algorithms protecting blockchain networks and wallets, such as elliptic curve encryption, potentially allowing bad actors to forge transactions or steal private keys at a scale impossible with today's classical computers. | EDITOR’S CHOICE |
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