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The Big Story
CLARITY Act Passage Odds Crash To Just 10%
Galaxy Digital has slashed its probability estimate for the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to just 10%, down from 75% in May. Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, attributed the collapse to unresolved political disagreements and a lack of momentum in the Senate. The reversal comes as the White House convenes regulators this week to break the standoff, bringing together SEC and CFTC leadership alongside crypto industry figures for a meeting that could determine whether the bill gains traction or dies in committee. President Trump is also hosting a major crypto summit on August 19 with executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood, and others.
Breaking News
Markets Receive Big Boost as Iran and United States Extend Ceasefire — The White House and Iranian leadership have agreed to extend the ongoing 60-day ceasefire, pausing further naval activity in the Persian Gulf and delivering an immediate jolt to global markets.
MiCA Rules Hit Bitpanda With Austria's First Published Penalty — Austria's Financial Market Authority fined Bitpanda €70,000 for failing to submit a crypto-asset service provider application under MiCA, marking the country's first published penalty under the framework.
Safepal Users Face Phishing Risk After Major Data Breach — An authorization flaw in SafePal's order-tracking plug-in exposed the personal data of nearly 40,000 customers, creating a heightened phishing risk for hardware wallet users.
Apple Mac Flaw Lets Hackers Turn Devices Into Monero Miners — A critical vulnerability in Apple's built-in Screen Sharing feature has been actively exploited to commandeer Macs and use them to mine Monero, according to Dutch cybersecurity authorities.
Top Stories
XRP Traders Bet On a Rebound as Futures Positions Surge
XRP futures open interest on exchanges has climbed to $2.75 billion, signaling renewed conviction among derivatives traders. The surge in leveraged positioning comes as Ripple continues expanding its stablecoin footprint, having minted an additional 10 million RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, bringing total supply to approximately 1.71 billion tokens. Binance has also extended its RLUSD rewards campaign, offering users another four weeks to earn XRP with a larger reward pool.
Vitalik Says Ethereum Could Borrow Bitcoin's Scaling Playbook
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly credited Bitcoin's UTXO-based innovations as a potential model for Ethereum's scaling roadmap. The comments came as core developers work through 66 proposals for the Hegotá upgrade, the next major hard fork targeted for 2027. Native privacy features are also being considered for inclusion, with FOCIL already confirmed as the only locked-in slot so far.
Is Aave Taking Over Tokenized Gold In DEFI?
Aave V3 now accounts for more than half of all tokenized gold deposited across DeFi lending protocols, according to Token Terminal data. PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) are driving the dominance, with PAXG accepted as collateral on Aave V3 deployments across multiple chains. The positioning reflects growing institutional interest in using physical-backed assets as DeFi collateral.
Deep Dive of the Week
Inside HBAR's Spot ETF Debut: Who's Buying & Why?
The Canary HBAR ETF launched as the first U.S. spot exchange-traded fund holding HBAR in October 2025. Nearly a year later, our analysis breaks down the buyer base—institutional asset managers, ETF-focused retail investors, and long-term Hedera holders seeking regulated exposure—and what the fund's trajectory says about demand for non-BTC, non-ETH crypto products.
By the Numbers
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260,000 RWA holders — Plume Network has crossed the quarter-million milestone for real-world asset holders, reflecting steady acceleration in private equity and physical asset tokenization.
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1,537 validators — Algorand currently operates with one of the largest validator sets in crypto, placing it among the most decentralized networks as it prepares for a post-quantum upgrade.
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3,000x in three days — Niu Lai, a BNB Chain meme coin tied to a viral Chinese animated film, surged from obscurity to a $40 million market cap at its peak.
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€70,000 — The size of Austria's first published MiCA penalty, issued to Bitpanda for failing to submit required registration documents.
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10,000 Linkers in a day — InterLink hit a new migration record as users moved to its Private Mainnet, marking the highest single-day figure the project has recorded.
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7,500 ICP bounty — DFINITY founder Dominic Williams offered a token reward to anyone who can produce verified evidence exposing critics of the Internet Computer Protocol.
On Our Radar
Cardano's Dijkstra upgrade — A two-phase protocol upgrade is planned, with phase one targeting Ouroboros Linear Leios and nested transactions in Q4 2026, followed by Peras consensus finality in Q2 2027.
CZ abandons public wallet — Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao says he will stop using one of his public wallets after an unrelenting flood of unsolicited meme coin deposits made account management nearly impossible.
Chainalysis sues DHS — The blockchain analytics firm has taken the U.S. government to court over a contract awarded to rival TRM Labs, alleging improper procurement procedures.
Curve founder criticizes Solana ecosystem — Michael Egorov called memecoin launchpad PumpFun a "casino of scams" and criticized the Phantom wallet's user experience.
Until Wednesday.