Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo announced his retirement from legal practice at Willkie Farr & Gallagher to go full-time as a strategic advisor for crypto and fintech startups. Known for approving the first Bitcoin futures, he said regulators already have tools to build a framework without waiting for Congress.
XRP ETF clients purchased $12.98 million worth of XRP in 24 hours, lifting total net assets to $1.54 billion. Cumulative net inflows reached $1.25 billion, with Grayscale and other issuers reporting strong demand.
The Wall Street Journal's Nick Timiraos warns that three Trump-appointed Fed governors could vote against the rate decision this week, which would be the first such united dissent since 1988, signaling a crisis of Fed independence.
President Trump threatened to launch a forceful strike against Iran today, triggering a sharp selloff in U.S. equities as geopolitical risk surged. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all hit fresh intraday lows.
U.S. stocks closed higher after June CPI came in softer than expected, cutting the market’s bets on a July rate hike and pushing investors back into rate-sensitive growth trades. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.02%, the S&P 500 gained 0.38%, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.90%. The move was not broad-based. Instead, money rotated heavily into AI hardware, semiconductors, memory, and optical networking, while parts of software and traditional IT services lagged. CPI slowed to 3.5% year over year from 4.2% in May, while monthly CPI fell 0.4%, the first monthly decline in six years. CME FedWatch showed the implied probability of the Federal Reserve holding rates steady in July jumped to 83.4% from 58.3% a day earlier. Treasury yields eased, with the 10-year yield falling to 4.58%, and the VIX dropped to 16.50. Semiconductor and memory names led the rebound. SK Hynix ADR surged 27.29%, Micron rose 4.92%, Nvidia gained 4.06%, and Intel added 4.50%. Large banks also supported sentiment as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan posted strong results. IBM moved the other way, plunging 25.21% after preliminary second-quarter results missed expectations, marking the biggest one-day drop in the company’s 115-year history.
U.S. crypto legislation is entering a narrow window before Congress breaks for its August recess, with the CLARITY Act now under pressure from multiple directions. On July 13, Donald Trump urged senators on Truth Social to pass the bill quickly, arguing that China and other countries are trying to lead in crypto finance and artificial intelligence. One day later, Senator Cynthia Lummis said on X that executive action cannot give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority over digital asset spot markets, add sanctions powers, or shield developers from improper prosecution, and that only Congress can do that through legislation. Federal law enforcement has also become more visible in the debate. The Association of State Banking Supervisors? No, the input identifies the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association ASBA as publicly backing the bill after sending a July 10 letter to the Senate Banking Committee, while asking lawmakers to narrow DeFi protections, revise the "specific intent" standard, and preserve existing federal investigative powers. That made it the second federal-aligned law enforcement group to support the measure. Still, two major disputes remain unresolved: whether non-custodial software developers could be treated as money transmitters, and how to address conflict-of-interest language tied to Trump’s more than $1 billion in crypto income. With about four weeks left, timing and votes remain the main obstacles.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission named Amir Zaidi as its new Chief of Staff. Zaidi previously served at the CFTC from 2010 to 2019, overseeing the certification and rollout of the first federally regulated crypto product—Bitcoin futures. His return strengthens the agency's crypto regulatory expertise.
Franklin Crypto Index ETF (EZPZ) will expand from BTC and ETH to include XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, Stellar, and Chainlink starting Dec 1, 2025, under new Cboe BZX generic listing rules, with quarterly rebalancing and in-kind creations.
