‘Disappointing’ — crypto advocates react to delay in CLARITY vote
With the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act now set for a cloture vote in September, many advocates and industry leaders are frustrated and disappointed at lawmakers’ failure to act before the US Senate broke for a month-long recess. On Saturday, the Senate Daily Press reported that Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on a motion for the CLARITY Act to go to the chamber floor for consideration, ending speculation that lawmakers would address the bill more than a year after it was passed by the House of Representatives. The CLARITY vote is now expected when the Senate reconvenes in mid-September, and would require support from 60 senators to pass. Across the crypto industry, many executives and advocates expressed their disappointment with the Senate’s inaction, as the push to September will happen with just 50 days before the 2026 midterm elections, likely reducing the odds of CLARITY passing. “[Y]ou can imagine how frustrated I am,” said Senator Cythnia Lummis on Friday after the chamber did not schedule a vote on CLARITY, adding: “I will continue working with my colleagues to get this done — this fight is far from over.” Source: Cynthia Lummis Others, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and the exchange’s chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad, called the Senate’s action “disappointing” but said that September would be the time to “finish the job.” Bitmine Chair Tom Lee noted in the company’s weekly report that “financial markets seem more focused on the recent softer inflation and jobs data” rather than any potential impact of CLARITY not passing. While there were reports of progress in bipartisan talks on the crypto market structure bill, lawmakers in the Senate didn’t announce solutions in response to pushes from many Democrats for stricter ethics provisions, in particular for rules affecting US President Donald Trump’s crypto investments. Trump continues to face scrutiny from many in Congress over his family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and his own projects, including the memecoin launched days before he took office. Some banking advocates, in contrast, have been pushing lawmakers to address how CLARITY could still allow companies to pay interest to stablecoin holders in certain situations, challenging the industry. In a Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed published before Thune’s cloture motion, the publication’s editorial board said that, under CLARITY, small banks would miss out “because they rely on interest payments to attract deposits.“ The editorial continued: “The Clarity Act can serve a useful purpose with some language changes,“ said the editorial board. “The crypto industry and its friends in Washington portray themselves as defenders of free markets. What they really want is to be quasi-banks without abiding by the same regulations.“ Prediction market users still anticipating CLARITY by 2027 Despite the setback for the bill in Congress, some event contracts on prediction market platforms are still offering users favorable odds on CLARITY passing by the end of the year. On Kalshi, an event contract with $1.23 million wagered gave users an 88% chance of the Senate voting on the legislation before Oct. 1, while a similar one on Polymarket gave a 26% chance of the bill being signed into law this year. That contract had total wagers topping $5.79 million. If passed by the Senate, CLARITY would need to return to the House for a vote before potentially going to Trump’s desk. Magazine: BIP-110 ends with a whimper, CLARITY vote punted: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 9
Strategy turns 1,690 BTC into $108.6M STRC buyback
Strategy, which holds the largest corporate Bitcoin treasury, sold BTC for the second week in a row to repurchase its STRC preferred stock. The company sold 1,690 Bitcoin for $108.6 million between Aug. 3 and Aug. 9, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Strategy used the proceeds to buy back 1.15 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $108.6 million. STRC is a variable-rate preferred stock designed to pay monthly dividends. The transaction marked Strategy’s fourth disclosed Bitcoin sale of 2026, bringing its total Bitcoin sales for the year to 6,948 BTC, while the company still holds 840,447 BTC purchased for an aggregate $63.36 billion. Bitcoin becomes part of the funding engine Strategy sold the latest batch at an average net price of $64,262 per Bitcoin, while its total holdings carry an average purchase price of $75,385 per BTC, including fees and expenses. Strategy’s prior disclosed sale involved 1,638 BTC for $104.73 million between July 27 and Aug. 2, when it also used Bitcoin sale proceeds to fund STRC repurchases. Source: SEC The latest filing shows that Strategy has $785.2 million remaining under its digital credit securities repurchase program, which covers its preferred stock, while another $1 billion remains available under its Class A common-stock repurchase program. $4.65 billion reserve cushions preferred dividends Strategy also continued building its US dollar reserve, reporting a balance of $4.65 billion as of Sunday, up from roughly $4 billion in the previous weekly update. The company said $650 million of the $653.1 million in net proceeds from recent MSTR stock sales went toward the reserve, while the latest figure also includes expected proceeds from at-the-market (ATM) sales that had not yet settled. Source: SEC STRC shares have also rallied during Strategy’s recent buybacks, retaking $90 on Aug. 3 after rebounding 24% from their June lows. STRC was up 0.46% at $95.45 in premarket trading Monday after closing Friday at $95, while MSTR gained 0.25% to $100.26, according to Yahoo Finance. Magazine: Strategy became a symbol of the dot-com crash: Could history repeat?
Tokenized RWA surge to $4T may push LINK to $200 by end 2030: Standard Chartered
The Chainlink (LINK) token may see an more than 25-fold increase by the end of the decade, as tokenized real world assets (RWA) will reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028, according to a forecast by Geoff Kendrick, the global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered. Kendrick said that the growth in tokenized assets will require more external data to come securely onchain, which may increase Chainlink’s fee generation and push its LINK token to $200 by the end of 2030, up from $8 today, according to a Monday report shared with Cointelegraph. The report also forecast a 37-fold rise in tokenized and crypto-native assets deployed in decentralized finance, pushing these assets to $2.7 trillion by the end of 2030. Kendrick said these assets will require trusted data, interoperability between networks, privacy-preserving compliance and integrations with existing financial systems, which “only Chainlink is currently equipped to provide.” The report follows growing demand for tokenized assets. Tokenized RWA trading on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) reached a new all-time high of $141 billion in July, marking a 19.5% monthly rise largely driven by public equities, according to data provider CryptoRank. Chainlink is the blockchain industry’s leading decentralized oracle provider for crosschain communication, with $34.4 billion in total value secured. Chronicle ranks second with $7.36 billion, according to data aggregator DefiLlama. Standard Chartered’s Kendrick said that potential risks to its Chainlink price forecast include slower-than-expected institutional tokenization initiatives, competition from specialist oracle providers and potential technical setbacks. Magazine: What NYSE’s exploration of onchain systems means for financial markets
Sweden-listed health-tech and Bitcoin treasury company H100 Group completed its acquisition of Norwegian Bitcoin companies holding 2,455 Bitcoin (BTC), more than tripling its Bitcoin treasury to 3,506 BTC. The transaction involved no cash consideration, with H100 issuing 790.5 million new shares to the sellers, the company said in a Monday press release. The newly issued shares diluted existing shareholders by about 70%. H100 priced them at 1.86 Swedish kronor ($0.20) each, valuing the transaction at about 1.47 billion kronor ($155 million). H100 said the consideration was calculated on a 1:1 “Bitcoin-for-Bitcoin” basis, with the number of shares issued determined by the sellers’ proportionate share of the combined Bitcoin holdings of H100 and the acquired companies. Other assets and liabilities were excluded from the calculation. The acquisition brought the value of H100’s Bitcoin holdings to about $228 million, making it Europe’s second-largest Bitcoin treasury company by holdings, behind Germany’s Bitcoin Group SE with 3,605 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries. H100 first announced the deal in March, when it signed a letter of intent to acquire privately held Norwegian Bitcoin companies Moonshot and Never Say Die, along with their Bitcoin holdings. Magazine: Bitcoiners turn to dice throws as self-custody setups are re-evaluated
ビットコインの「アンチスパム」BIPはどこにも進まない BIP-110のソフトフォークの支持者たちは、ブロックチェーンからスパムを一掃できることを期待していたが、長く激しい議論の末、この提案はDOA(Dead On Arrival:到着即死)と宣告された。土曜に義務的なシグナリングへ入る直前に獲得できたのは支持率わずか2.5%のみで、その後は少数派のチェーンへ分岐し、8時間でわずか2ブロックを採掘しただけで停止した。 これはおそらく驚くことではない。新しいチェーンで採掘することは、ビットコインと同様に難しく費用もかかるからだ——しかし、コストを回収するためにブロック報酬を売却できる見込みがまったくない。別の2,014ブロックを採掘できていれば、難易度は下方に調整されていたはずだ。
Bitcoin Red Team founder turns to Chinese AI: ‘It absolutely guts me’
A Bitcoin security researcher says he has been forced to go back to using open-source Chinese AI models after finding himself restricted from analyzing further codebases by OpenAI, highlighting a growing concern that the most capable AI tools aren’t being made available to defenders. In an X post on Tuesday, AnchorWatch CEO Rob Hamilton said he had begun integrating OpenAI’s Trust & Cyber capabilities into his Bitcoin Red Team work on Saturday, only to find his access restricted the following morning. “It absolutely guts me as a patriotic American to have to do this, but I will be going back to using Chinese open source models to conduct my research to protect Bitcoin infrastructure,” he added. Bitcoin Red Team, a group of volunteers, has been using AI tools and human review to scan hundreds of open-source Bitcoin-related repositories for vulnerabilities, with efforts accelerating days after the Coldcard hardware wallet hack, which has seen over $100 million in Bitcoin stolen. Last month, crypto executives told Cointelegraph that many of crypto’s biggest players are still waiting to gain access to powerful new AI models to strengthen their code from attacks, with only a select few having been able to get it. “I am now prevented from being able to continue the investigation in a further effort to make sure their code changes are sufficient, as well as understand if there are other issues that have yet to be discovered,” said Hamilton. “Black hats will not hit these issues. The white hats will. We’ve hit a local minima in policy,” said Hamilton. “Intelligence is unrestricted for those who don’t follow rules, and those who engage in harm reduction are left on the sidelines.”
Ex-US defense secretary calls CLARITY Act a ‘national security bill’
A former US defense secretary has urged the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, arguing that weak digital asset rules create openings for North Korea and China to undermine American financial power. In an op-ed in the Financial Times on Saturday, former US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Beijing is already investing in state-directed payment systems to sidestep American supervision and erode the US dollar’s central role. “I have long argued that China is the greatest strategic threat of our lifetime,” said Esper, who also serves as a member of the Coinbase Global Advisory Council. He also said the act would give the US better tools to cut off crypto-specific loopholes that can be used by North Korean actors such as the Lazarus Group to avoid US financial controls. “The Act also extends the Treasury’s potent special-measures authority under section 311 of the USA Patriot Act — one of our sharpest weapons against rogue actors,” he said. The Senate is expected to vote on the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15. On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture to bring the CLARITY Act to the Senate floor for consideration. “This is why the Clarity Act, now before the Senate, is not merely a financial services bill. It is also a national security bill, and it should be understood as such and passed with urgency,” said Esper.
Brazil targets crypto fraud with up to 24-hour transfer hold
Brazil’s central bank will require virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to place precautionary holds of up to 24 hours on certain transfers to foreign platforms or self-custody wallets as part of new measures aimed at preventing fraud. On Friday, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) said the requirement will apply to funds received above $10,000, either in a single transaction or based on a customer’s total transactions in a day. Providers must also hold other transfers requiring further scrutiny under their risk-management policies. The rules take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. Providers must notify customers of holds and keep records of fraud incidents, attempted fraud and corrective actions. A VASP may complete its assessment and release a transfer before the 24 hours expire, provided that it follows parameters set out by the central bank. The measure adds Brazil to a growing list of jurisdictions tightening crypto safeguards as regulators confront scams that exploit the speed and cross-border reach of digital assets. Brazil joins global push against crypto scams Brazil’s move follows anti-scam measures introduced in other jurisdictions. In Japan, the Financial Services Agency and National Police Agency asked crypto exchanges to restrict withdrawals after customers deposit fiat currency or buy digital assets. The authorities also called for platforms to require customers to preregister withdrawal addresses and impose a waiting period before newly added addresses can be used. Other proposed safeguards include customer-specific withdrawal limits, stronger monitoring, phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and checks that the name of a bank remitter matches the crypto account holder. Unlike Brazil’s regulation, the Japanese measures are not binding, and exchanges can determine implementation based on their operations and exposure to misuse. European regulators have warned of criminals impersonating watchdogs and crypto companies as users search for licensed service providers after the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets licensing deadline. France’s financial regulator reported cases involving fake websites, while the European Securities and Markets Authority said scammers had misused its identity and logo in falsified documents. Magazine: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized... including farts