Hi everyone. Markets took a breather yesterday as optimism around the CLARITY Act cooled following the release of updated Senate bill text. While crypto equities gave back part of their recent gains, ETF inflows continued to build, extending their strongest streak since May. Below, we separate headlines from substance, unpack what actually changed in the latest CLARITY draft, and explain which parts matter most for crypto markets.

Wednesday's session traded mixed, with BTC and equity indices trading slightly lower and giving back gains from earlier in the week. While the odds of the CLARITY Act passing moved from 31% to 51% during Tuesday’s session, and crypto equities like COIN and CRCL rallied double digits on the back of this, those odds have since dropped back down to 38%, dragging crypto equities and other indices down with them.

Senate Republicans released updated bill text on Wednesday codifying the ethics provisions, and the market may now be pricing actual votes on this language rather than just headlines. The volatility in these crypto equities shows that this sector may have the most to gain from bringing this bill over the finish line, the status of which we discuss later. Equity futures traded lower overnight with the Nasdaq opening down -0.97%, bringing crypto majors down modestly into Thursday’s open.

The brief spike in CLARITY odds brought most of crypto up with it. Should momentum continue to build and the odds move upward, we should expect this legislation to be a tide that lifts all boats. Going from high uncertainty to low uncertainty is bullish, regardless of how hardline the rulemaking may be. Supporting prices even more, the ETFs are on their longest stretch of consecutive inflows since the beginning of May, and have attracted $750M in net inflows over the past five days. 

— Luke

Cutting through the CLARITY noise

Trump broke the CLARITY Act's summer stall this week, and the core fight over enforcement remains open. A White House official told Republican negotiators that the president accepted an ethics provision barring senior federal officials, including himself and the vice president, from personal crypto ties, bringing CLARITY closer to a Senate floor vote. Lummis released the updated text on Wednesday, merging the Banking and Agriculture committees' work, so the ethics language now sits in public view. It still does not name who enforces the ban, and Democrats say they have not seen a version they would accept.

Lummis and Moreno negotiated the ethics package with the White House, without Democratic sign-off. It bars the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset for compensation while in office, and sunsets on Jan. 20, 2029. Covered officials would sell their crypto and stakes in crypto companies or move them into a blind trust they do not control. Republicans hand the DOJ civil enforcement authority, including the power to sue exchanges that list prohibited tokens, with penalties reaching $250K per violation per day for intermediaries and disgorgement plus a $500K or 10% penalty for the officials themselves. Sales above $1,000 trigger disclosure, and the GAO would study the gaps that remain.

The parties split on enforcement. Senate Democrats want state attorneys general policing the restriction. The White House and Republicans want the US attorney general and the DOJ to enforce it. Democrats read federal-only enforcement as hollow against a president whose former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, is before the Senate as the nominee for attorney general, and whose disclosures show more than $1B in crypto income last year. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks called DOJ-only enforcement "unserious." Pressure is also coming from the left. Indivisible and Demand Progress spent this week pressuring Senate Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand among them, to reject a weak ethics deal. Those are the same votes Republicans need to reach 60.

The rest of the text moved little. Industry sources say the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act is unchanged from the May Banking Committee version, keeping non-custodial developers and infrastructure providers outside the money-transmitter definition, with the Lummis-Grassley amendment preserving criminal liability for anyone who knowingly facilitates illicit transactions and the Keep Your Coins Act protecting self-custody. The stablecoin yield section holds the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise, barring interest on idle payment-stablecoin balances while allowing activity-based rewards. A new law-enforcement title funds state and local crypto investigations and stands up a cyber center aimed at North Korea and Iran. It also requires stablecoin issuers to honor lawful freeze and seize orders, and the bankruptcy language keeps customer assets as customer property rather than part of a failed custodian's estate, the direct answer to FTX.

Less than three weeks remain. Majority Leader John Thune has committed to a floor vote before the recess that begins around Aug. 7. A Senate vote clears one chamber. The House then takes up the amended version after it returns in September, ahead of presidential signature and subsequent CFTC and SEC rulemaking.

Traders separate the vote from the outcome. A Senate vote before recess trades near 72% on Kalshi, though on $31K in volume, thin enough to discount. Polymarket's "signed into law in 2026" trades near 41% on $2.4M, and Kalshi's deeper market on crypto market structure becoming law by year-end sits near 42% on $3.6M. The two deepest books split ten points on the same question, and neither prices the probability of enactment above 50%. Claims that the odds are ‘above 50% to pass’ sit at the optimistic edge of that range.

The loudest item of the week was the least grounded. An unverified rumor held that CLARITY would geoblock US users at the RPC level with wallet-specific enforcement, framing it as bearish for HYPE and pairing it with an unconfirmed claim of Multicoin unstaking near $120M in HYPE before a July 28 unlock. Multicoin's Tushar Jain confirmed a large unstake Wednesday but said the firm did not exit, citing privacy-driven wallet rotation over a sale. No one has shown draft text supporting the geoblock mechanism, and the version Lummis released Wednesday contains no such provision.

— Nick

Helium Q2 Token Holder Report

Blockworks reads the quarter as a pricing reset rather than a demand slump, after HIP-143 cut the carrier payer rate from $0.50/GB to roughly $0.10/GB on June 4 and offload volume grew about 20% quarter over quarter through the change. DC-burn revenue came in at $3.35M, down 14%, and Blockworks flags the headline 2.2x revenue-to-emissions coverage as emissions-led, since HNT emissions fell 39% to $1.50M against a declining revenue line, leaving the ~1.7x exit-rate figure as the cleaner forward read. Post-quarter, the veHNT-approved HIP-149 moves deployer rewards to usage and retires Proof-of-Coverage, funded by a self-terminating ~141M HNT supplement that flips the network from deflation to net issuance, the swing factor for whether Helium's carrier-only model funds itself.

Stablecoins. Now on Ramp.

Ramp added stablecoin rails to its spend platform in partnership with Privy, letting businesses open a Stablecoin Account to hold USDC or USDT backed by cash reserves, earn up to 3.25% in rewards, and send payments to vendor wallets across 140+ countries or convert to fiat in 40+ currencies. Stablecoins also become a standalone payment method in Bill Pay, so a business can fund a payout from a USD bank account and Ramp converts the funds before sending them, no balance required. Ramp reports 1,000+ businesses already paying vendors this way, with more than 70% of that volume settling outside traditional banking hours, a data point that captures the core pitch: 24/7 settlement against wire cutoffs and cross-border lag.

The Dollar That Earns, Not the Dollar That Moves

John Conneely, Global Head of BD at Sky, argues that stablecoin leaderboards rank the wrong number, lumping payment dollars and savings dollars into one race when the two compete for separate shelf space. His case for USDS/sUSDS turns on where the yield lives: governance posts the Sky Savings Rate, native to the asset itself, while payment dollars such as OUSD keep returns in distribution deals set at a platform's discretion. He anchors the argument in Sky's $13.96 billion collateral book across 40-plus positions, including $4 billion in stablecoin reserves, $1.5 billion in tokenized Treasuries via BlackRock's BUIDL and Janus Henderson Anemoy, and nearly $3 billion across onchain and OTC crypto lending, casting allocation rather than supply as the metric that decides the savings contest. Read it as a Sky BD case, not a neutral survey; Conneely notes the views are his own, not the Sky Frontier Foundation's.