The day’s crypto headlines were led by a new U.S. Senate draft of the Clarity bill, BitMEX’s decision to wind down its exchange business, Kazakhstan’s approval of strategic digital mining rules, and a major bridge exploit tied to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Top stories
- Robotics company Atoms raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
- Crypto exchange BitMEX said it will shut down on Sept. 23 and has stopped new user registrations.
- Kazakhstan approved rules for strategic digital mining, requiring miners that receive electricity allocations to transfer part of their output into a national reserve structure.
- The U.S. Senate released an updated Clarity bill with ethics rules barring public officials from issuing tokens, with the provision set to expire in 2029.
- An AFX-operated bridge in the Arbitrum ecosystem was exploited, with about 24.15 million USDC stolen.
- Grayscale said Bitcoin may already have found its bottom and argued that a macro framework matters more than the four-year cycle.
Policy and macro
China’s Commerce Ministry says tariff-cut discussions with the U.S. are moving ahead
Meng Huating, director general of the Department of Foreign Investment Administration at China’s Ministry of Commerce, said at a State Council Information Office press conference that Chinese and U.S. economic and trade teams are in close communication on detailed arrangements for a trade council, including its structure, functions and operating model.
She said the two sides are also discussing a reciprocal tariff-cut framework of $30 billion each. China is broadly seeking views from domestic companies, chambers of commerce, local governments, American business chambers and other stakeholders, while the U.S. is collecting public comments on the trade council and reciprocal tariff-cut arrangements. Both sides will stay in close contact, work out specific product-level tariff cuts as soon as possible and move toward implementation.
Kazakhstan approves strategic digital mining rules
Kazakhstan’s government approved the Rules for the Implementation of Strategic Digital Mining, giving companies eligibility for electricity allocations from energy-producing organizations at the highest tariff rate for a period of 10 years.
To qualify, companies must transfer part of their mined crypto output to the Astana Hub autonomous cluster fund. The assets will then be handed to a state investment company under the National Bank for trust management and used to supplement a national strategic cryptocurrency reserve.
Operators that want to take part must submit applications through the E-licensing database for review by a dedicated committee. If approved, miners must sign an agreement with the Astana Hub autonomous cluster fund within five business days and also execute an electricity purchase agreement with an energy producer.
Beijing backs development of the token economy
Beijing’s municipal development and reform authorities, together with other departments, issued measures on accelerating development led by intelligent agents, aiming to foster new forms of the intelligent economy.
The document encourages development of the token economy and calls for work on processors suited to agent-system calls, complex task scheduling and high-frequency decision-making, as well as low-latency and high-throughput inference chips. It also backs work on inference architecture and other key technologies to cut inference costs through heterogeneous coordination, memory-compute coordination and intelligent scheduling, while improving token efficiency across the full stack.
The measures also call for new business models including Token-as-a-Service, Agent-as-a-Service and Result-as-a-Service, and say qualifying token-related products and services can be included in the small and medium-sized enterprise service voucher program. Beijing will also step up support through computing-power vouchers and encourage eligible districts to explore token vouchers and agent service vouchers.
Senate Republicans publish updated Clarity bill
U.S. Senate Republicans released the latest text of the Clarity bill, a 616-page draft that could reach the Senate floor as early as next week.
The new version adds ethics language that would prohibit public officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets. They would still be allowed to invest in digital assets, but any sale of crypto holdings above $1,000 would have to be disclosed. Covered officials would also have to sell crypto assets and investments in crypto companies or place them into a blind trust they cannot control. The Department of Justice would enforce the provision, though Democrats argue state attorneys general should also have a role.
The ethics section includes a sunset clause ending on Jan. 20, 2029. The bill also contains the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which would provide a safe harbor for non-custodial developers by clarifying that they are not money transmitters. That section has broad support in the crypto industry, but law enforcement agencies and Catholic leaders have warned that it could weaken anti-trafficking efforts and investigations. The draft adds 25 more provisions in response to law-enforcement concerns.
The crypto industry broadly welcomed the updated text. Democrats quickly pushed back, saying the ethics language is too weak. The report said the provision touches on Donald Trump’s crypto holdings and has raised new questions about the bill’s prospects in the Senate.
John Thune may seek a vote next week
Senate Majority Leader John Thune plans to hold a vote on the Clarity bill as early as next week, even if no agreement is reached with Democrats.
Cynthia Lummis says negotiations are still ongoing
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a lead negotiator on the Clarity bill, said the latest text is not final and that ethics provisions and other sections will keep being discussed over the weekend.
Lummis said Republican negotiators and Democrats have been in talks for “weeks,” but ran into a deadlock over whether state attorneys general should be able to bring criminal or civil actions under the ethics provisions. She called that issue a “clear red line” for many senators and the White House because state attorneys general have repeatedly sued the administration. She said states could instead sue crypto exchanges that list non-compliant assets.
Democratic senators said the draft still does not do enough to win their support. Elizabeth Warren argued the current text would have little effect on Trump’s crypto business, that misconduct would be ignored by the Justice Department and that immunity would effectively kick in after a president leaves office. Lummis also said anti-money-laundering provisions may still be negotiated and that new language includes measures aimed at crypto ATM fraud. The bill needs 60 votes to advance. The Senate goes into recess on Aug. 7, and the timing of any vote remains unclear.
SEC’s Hester Peirce warns on vault and lending structures
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement that putting crypto assets “on-chain” does not automatically place related activity outside the scope of federal securities laws.
She said crypto vaults and lending strategies that use smart contracts to allocate assets for yield could amount to a common enterprise, an investment company or securitized notes if a specific person or team sets staking or lending allocations, interest rates, eligible assets, loan-to-value ratios and liquidation thresholds. Participants should review whether their activities trigger securities issuance, investment adviser or other compliance requirements.
Peirce said industry participants are welcome to engage with the SEC on compliance paths and provide views on how existing rules could be adjusted to accommodate vaults and on-chain lending.
Project updates
BitMEX to close on Sept. 23, 2026
BitMEX said it will formally shut down at 12:00 Beijing time on Sept. 23, 2026 and has stopped new user registrations effective immediately. Its parent company, HDR Global Trading Limited, said the board decided to close the exchange after a strategic review.
The platform said it will continue to operate normally until then, but from Aug. 26, 2026 at 12:00 Beijing time users will no longer be able to open new positions and will only be allowed to reduce them. Any remaining positions after the shutdown time will be forcibly closed.
BitMEX also said KYC users who fail to withdraw assets before the deadline will be charged an account management fee of either $50 per month or 1% of their balance, whichever is higher. The fee may increase. The exchange warned users about phishing scams and said withdrawals could be delayed because of blockchain confirmation times and other factors, while adding that all assets exceed liabilities.
Binance Alpha opens airdrop claims and trading at 19:00 today
Binance will open Binance Alpha airdrop claims and trading at 19:00 UTC+8 today. Users with at least 256 Binance Alpha points can claim the token airdrop on a first-come, first-served basis until the pool is exhausted or the campaign ends. Binance said the token name will be announced through its official channels.
The Smarter Web Company sells Bitcoin to repay debt
U.K.-listed The Smarter Web Company said it repaid Smarter Convert convertible notes two weeks early, paying about $11.6985 million to TOBAM Group through the sale of 177.89 BTC at an average price of $65,762.
The company’s CEO said the structure had once been seen as flexible, but is no longer viewed as the right capital solution. After the repayment, the company holds 2,700 BTC. A related potential share issuance has been canceled.
Drift Protocol attacker starts moving funds through Tornado Cash
After lying dormant for three months following the April attack on Drift Protocol on Solana that caused a $285 million loss, the attacker began moving funds through Tornado Cash today, sending deposits in batches of 100 ETH to the Tornado Cash Router, with multiple transfers per minute.
Verus Ethereum bridge exploited
The Verus Ethereum bridge was attacked, with about $7.53 million transferred to an address beginning with 0xCFd0. CertiK said the bridge may have failed to verify whether the amount entered on the Verus side matched the payment amount, a cause similar to a security incident in May.
AFX-operated bridge in Arbitrum ecosystem loses about 24.15 million USDC
A cross-chain bridge operated by AFX in the Arbitrum ecosystem was attacked at 5:30 a.m. Beijing time on July 23, and about 24.15 million USDC was stolen.
Blockaid said it is working with the Arbitrum team on the response, communicating with affected protocols and helping freeze stolen funds. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder said the transactions came from a third-party protocol and that Arbitrum’s native bridge was not attacked or exploited. He said more details will be provided in coordination with the third-party team.
Upbit to list o1.exchange (O)
South Korean exchange Upbit will list o1.exchange (O) in KRW, BTC and USDT markets. Deposits and withdrawals are expected to open within two hours of the announcement, and trading is scheduled to begin at 15:00 local time on July 23. Only the Base network will be supported for deposits and withdrawals.
SecondFi updates investigation into security incident
SecondFi said that from June 21 to June 23, roughly 16.1 million ADA worth about $2.6 million was stolen from 374 wallets.
The investigation found two independent attackers. The primary attacker is suspected to be the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group. A second attacker targeted different wallets during the same period, with no overlap between the two. The root cause was a cryptographic flaw in the wallet software’s signature generation process, and the same flaw was present in an unauthorized code copy published to GitHub.
SecondFi said the vulnerability has been fixed, but because of the severity of the incident it has decided to shut down both SecondFi and the Yoroi wallet. The team is developing a zero-knowledge-proof-based recovery tool expected in August and a wallet export function expected in early August to help users migrate funds safely. It also said it will never proactively direct-message users or ask for private keys or seed phrases.
Samsung Wallet to add stablecoin support
Samsung Electronics said at Galaxy Unpacked 2026 that Samsung Wallet plans to add support for stablecoins, combining payments, rewards and digital assets in one service. Samsung said the move would make it one of the first major phone brands to support stablecoins as a native feature.
Samsung Wallet has expanded from a payment tool into a broader digital hub that can store keys, IDs and boarding passes. The event also introduced Samsung Galaxy Card, the first financial service built around Samsung Wallet, launched in the U.S. with Barclays and Visa. Samsung said its Knox security platform protects sensitive information through end-to-end encryption.
Binance Futures to launch POPMARTUSDT perpetual contract
Binance Futures will launch the POPMARTUSDT U-margined perpetual contract at 10:30 Beijing time on July 23, 2026. The product tracks the stock price of Pop Mart International Group Limited (HKEX: 9992) and offers leverage of up to 25x.
B² Network suspected exploit
B² Network on BNB Chain was suspected of being attacked. The attacker stole 8.591 million B2 tokens worth about $3.86 million, swapped them for 5,409 WBNB worth about $3.11 million, bridged the assets to Ethereum and is now moving funds to Zcash through NEAR Intents.
Funding and corporate news
Atoms raises $1.7 billion led by a16z
Atoms, the robotics company founded by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, completed a $1.7 billion financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the board.
Other equity investors in the round included Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group and Uber. Horowitz said the investment thesis is centered on specialized robots rather than humanoid robots, arguing that in heavy industry, specialized robots are far better suited to most tasks.
Mirae Asset completes acquisition of Korbit
South Korea’s Mirae Asset has completed its acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit. Korbit said its operating entity, user deposits and personal data handling remain unchanged. On July 9, Mirae Asset Group had received approval to buy a 92.06% stake in Korbit for 133.4 billion won.
Revolut valuation climbs to $115 billion
Crypto-friendly digital bank Revolut reached a $115 billion valuation in an employee share sale, up 53% from its $75 billion valuation in November last year, making it the most valuable private company in Europe.
The deal priced shares at $2,017 each and allowed employees and existing investors to sell stock rather than raise new capital for the company. The valuation is above Barclays’ market capitalization of about $95 billion.
Revolut reported 2025 pre-tax profit of $2.3 billion, up 57% year over year, on revenue of $6 billion, up 46%. It has more than 75 million customers. The main Revolut app supports trading in more than 200 crypto tokens, asset transfers and staking, and the company also runs the standalone crypto exchange Revolut X. It received a MiCA license last year, obtained a U.K. banking license in March and has applied for a U.S. national bank charter. It has also discussed a future IPO at a valuation of as much as $200 billion.
Views and analysis
CryptoQuant says short-term Bitcoin holders have been underwater for nine months
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost said Bitcoin short-term holders, defined as those holding for no more than 155 days, have been realizing losses for about nine straight months, which he described as typical of a bear market.
He said the short-term holder cost basis is around $68,800 and remains a pressure point. With Bitcoin trying to hold above $65,000, this group is estimated to be sitting on roughly 4% losses. Darkfost said $68,800 is the key level Bitcoin needs to reclaim, and that doing so could restore short-term optimism and confidence.
Grayscale says Bitcoin may already have bottomed
Grayscale research head Zach Pandl wrote that the bottom of the Bitcoin bear market may already be in place. In his view, Bitcoin has matured into a macro asset, meaning price will be driven more by factors such as real interest rates and economic growth than by the four-year halving cycle.
Pandl said previous Bitcoin bear markets aligned with weaker economic growth and rising real rates, and that the current macro backdrop looks similar. If the Federal Reserve stops raising rates and the economy stays in decent shape, Bitcoin may already have bottomed.
Bitwise CIO sees signs of a bottom
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said the crypto market is showing signs of a bottom. Since July 1, Bitcoin has risen 9% while the Nasdaq has fallen 6%, ETF flows have turned positive and market sentiment has improved.
Hougan said the next bull market will be driven by convergence between on-chain finance and traditional finance, with stablecoins, tokenization, 24/7 trading, instant settlement and institutional DeFi at the center.
He highlighted two kinds of opportunities. One is crypto-native applications such as Hyperliquid (HYPE), which he said have real revenue and strong token economics, with 99% of revenue used for HYPE buybacks and burns. HYPE is up 146% this year. The other is traditional financial firms such as Robinhood (HOOD), whose Layer 2 network, Robinhood Chain, attracted more than $300 million in deposits within two weeks of launch, processes an average of 3.6 million transactions a day and supports 24/7 tokenized stock trading for users in 120 countries.
Hougan said he is constructive on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and crypto-related equities, and is also watching institutions building crypto operations at scale, including Coinbase, Figure, BlackRock, Visa, Stripe and JPMorgan.
Cathie Wood says SpaceX could still become the most important company in history
Ark Invest chief executive Cathie Wood said in an interview with Fox Business that SpaceX could become “the most important company in the history of the world,” even though its stock has fallen about 48% from its peak to $116.95 and sits about 13% below its IPO price of $135.
Wood said Starlink, launch services and orbital data centers represent major opportunities. She said Starlink has roughly 70% of satellites currently in orbit as a global communications network, and that orbital data centers could cut computing costs and support advanced AI model development. SpaceX has already been leasing data-center computing capacity to companies including Anthropic and Google, she said.
Ark has bought about $80 million worth of SpaceX shares since the listing and added about $20.5 million more during the recent decline. SpaceX is set to release its first quarterly earnings report on Aug. 4, and a lockup covering about 911.5 million internal shares, representing roughly $116 billion in market value, begins expiring on Aug. 6.
Franklin Templeton says agentic AI is a crypto killer app
Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and industry advisory services at Franklin Templeton, said in a report that agentic AI will be the killer app that drives blockchain adoption.
The report said traditional payment networks are structurally and operationally too slow for agentic AI. Blockchains record and settle at the same time, while Visa settlement takes one to three business days. That speed difference matters when AI agents are making thousands of micropayments per hour.
Citing forecasts, the report said AI agents could account for 15% to 25% of U.S. e-commerce sales by 2030, with the agentic commerce market reaching $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Kaul said that if each agent uses native blockchain tokens to buy data, compute and API services, demand for tokens such as SOL and ETH would rise with usage.
Multicoin says unstaking HYPE was not for selling
Multicoin Capital managing partner Tushar Jain said in a post on X that the firm unstaked a large amount of HYPE yesterday but did not do so to sell the tokens.
Jain said the fund’s holdings are constantly tracked, so it has to rotate wallet addresses from time to time and institutions need privacy. He said that is why he is bullish on Zama (ZAMA) and Zcash (ZEC), describing Zama as unlocking private DeFi and Zcash as a leading privacy store-of-value chain. As capital markets move on-chain, privacy will matter, he said.
Key market data
CryptoQuant sees improvement in U.S. Bitcoin demand
CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said weekly net inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recovered to $439 million, the first clearly positive reading since May. The Coinbase Premium Index narrowed to -0.042 after 78 straight days below zero, improving by about 80% from the February low of -0.229.
He said U.S. spot demand is moving out of its period of maximum stress. The discount has not disappeared, but it has narrowed materially, and ETF flows turning positive confirms an improvement in market structure. Even so, the ETF cohort as a whole is still down about 22%, with an average cost basis of roughly $84,714 against a current Bitcoin price near $66,110. If the price climbs back to that level, some holders may sell into breakeven, creating overhead supply.
Adler said the key point is that both indicators are improving at the same time, but the premium has still been negative for 78 consecutive days, so a durable reversal is not yet confirmed. A positive premium together with sustained positive weekly inflows would confirm a structural shift. If flows turn negative again and the discount widens, the May-June setup would return.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs log a seventh straight day of net inflows
On July 22, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded total net inflows of $68.987 million, extending the streak to seven straight days. BlackRock’s IBIT led daily inflows with $38.7795 million, lifting its cumulative historical net inflow to $60.809 billion. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF BTC added $37.8773 million, bringing cumulative net inflows to $2.649 billion.
The largest daily outflow came from Grayscale’s GBTC at $38.2963 million, taking its cumulative historical net outflow to $27.415 billion. Total net assets across spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at $80.361 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio of 6.08% and cumulative historical net inflows of $51.851 billion.
Wallet linked to Multicoin moves 490,000 HYPE in two days
A wallet possibly linked to Multicoin Capital moved 490,000 HYPE, worth about $29.48 million, over two days. On the latest day it transferred 93,000 HYPE worth about $5.48 million to a new address. Two days earlier it had split 397,500 HYPE, worth about $24 million, across several addresses before depositing the tokens to Coinbase.
Whale adds more WBTC and ETH
A whale that has built positions of more than $109 million in ETH and WBTC since July added another roughly $17.75 million in assets. Over the past four hours, the wallet withdrew 75 WBTC and 4,998 ETH from exchanges.
According to the figures in the report, the wallet has accumulated 56,400 ETH and 700 WBTC with a total value of about $148 million. The average costs were around $1,742 for ETH and $64,205 for WBTC, leaving an unrealized gain of $11.42 million.
Spot Ethereum ETFs post a fourth straight day of net inflows
On July 22, spot Ethereum ETFs saw total net inflows of $72.6422 million, marking four straight days of inflows. BlackRock’s ETHA led with $53.4667 million, bringing cumulative net inflows to $11.454 billion. Fidelity’s FETH added $19.1755 million, taking cumulative net inflows to $2.134 billion.
Total net assets across spot Ethereum ETFs stood at $10.566 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio of 4.54% and cumulative net inflows of $11.227 billion.
F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun deposits ETH and WBTC to Binance
F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun deposited 6,009 ETH worth about $11.56 million and 62.31 WBTC worth about $4.09 million to Binance, for a total of roughly $15.65 million. The funds came from a Spark Fi withdrawal, unstaking through Lido Finance and a WETH-to-WBTC swap via Cowswap.
Grayscale filing highlights Worldcoin concentration
An SEC filing submitted by Grayscale for a Worldcoin ETF said about 90% of circulating WLD is held in 100 wallets, a sharp contrast with the project’s stated goal of distributing the token as broadly and fairly as possible around the world.
The filing also said the World Chain sequencer is operated in a centralized manner and that upgrade functions are coordinated by a small group from World Foundation, Tools for Humanity and Optimism. Governance, it said, is still largely guided by the World Foundation.
Mystery whale buys 27,000 ETH through Galaxy Digital OTC
A mystery whale reappeared after three months of inactivity and bought 27,000 ETH through a Galaxy Digital over-the-counter trade four hours ago, worth about $52.03 million.