The White House has reportedly reached an agreement on ethics language for the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a US crypto market-structure bill currently awaiting a possible Senate vote. The development is framed as a potential pathway to secure support from at least some Democratic lawmakers—an outcome that could prove decisive in a chamber where passage may require broad consensus.

According to a Tuesday report from Punchbowl, White House officials met with Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno to align on the bill’s ethics provisions. Neither senator has publicly detailed the terms of the understanding, but the report suggested the outcome could also influence how US President Donald Trump’s crypto-related investments are viewed politically.

Key takeaways

• The White House is reportedly working to finalize ethics language in the CLARITY Act after meetings with Sen. Cynthia Lummis and Sen. Bernie Moreno.
• Support from some Democrats would matter because the Senate is expected to face a tight decision and likely needs 60 votes for passage.
• Many Democrats have previously indicated that CLARITY would be “worthless” without ethics provisions addressing conflicts they associate with Trump’s connections to the crypto industry.
• While the House passed CLARITY in July 2025, delays tied to shutdowns and unresolved policy questions have kept the Senate process uncertain.

Why ethics language has become the gatekeeper

The CLARITY Act has been positioned as a major effort to establish market-structure rules for crypto in the United States. The House passed the bill in July 2025 as part of Republicans’ “Crypto Week” agenda, but its Senate timeline has been complicated by multiple delays. The reported sticking points have ranged from lawmakers’ concerns over ethics to questions around tokenization and stablecoin-related rewards, alongside calls to protect developers from potential enforcement actions.

The central political friction in the Senate appears to be ethics and conflict-of-interest concerns, particularly as they relate to the Trump administration. Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted that Trump urged the Senate to pass CLARITY “in honor of” the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who the president said was a major supporter of the bill.

Still, several Senate Democrats have been explicit that they will not treat the legislation as complete without additional safeguards. According to Cointelegraph reporting, Senators including Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley, and Chris Van Hollen said that any CLARITY bill would be “worthless” without ethics provisions addressing potential conflicts they believe stem from Trump’s ties to the crypto industry, including his memecoin and the family’s World Liberty Financial business.

Unclear vote math as Senate calendar remains unsettled

Even with a reported ethics agreement, it is not yet clear whether CLARITY can secure the 60-vote threshold that typically applies to overcome Senate procedural hurdles. The bill’s prospects hinge on whether enough lawmakers—especially among Democrats—are persuaded that the ethics provisions adequately address their concerns.

As of Tuesday, the congressional calendar reportedly did not show a CLARITY vote, and the bill text had not been made public. That lack of transparency can further complicate support: lawmakers frequently need full access to the exact language before they can credibly assess whether amendments actually address the specific ethics risks they have raised.

Cointelegraph also reported that it requested details of the agreement from Lummis’ office but did not receive an immediate response, underscoring that the negotiation’s specifics remain largely undisclosed to the public.

Administration message: “comprehensive” ethics provisions

While the details of the reported deal have not been released, a White House official told Cointelegraph that the administration is committed to advancing CLARITY and said it had agreed to “the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history.” The official also characterized the process as highly responsive to Democratic concerns, saying the administration had “bent over backward to accommodate [Democrats’] concerns.”

At the same time, opposition has not disappeared. Many Democrats have argued that hearings are necessary to examine Trump’s crypto investments and related connections before any vote. Those calls reflect a broader concern: even if language is improved, lawmakers may still want a formal record and additional scrutiny through hearings to determine whether conflicts persist.

Coinbase vice chair Ryan VanGrack, cited in Cointelegraph reporting, suggested that Democrats have already been able to negotiate customer protection provisions into the Senate version of the bill. However, that progress on one policy area does not appear to have resolved the ethics debate, which remains a key driver of uncertainty.

Crypto market reaction tracks the political development

Bitcoin moved higher during the news cycle, climbing above $66,000 early on Tuesday and reaching a seven-week high, according to Cointelegraph’s coverage. Traders linked the move to reports of an ethics deal and to separate developments involving Trump’s plans to introduce additional 10% international trade tariffs.

In social media commentary, Michaël van de Poppe, founder and chief investment officer of MN Fund and MN Capital, attributed the rally to expectations surrounding potential approval of the CLARITY Act. The observation highlights how tightly some market participants are tying near-term price action to US regulatory and legislative progress, particularly when bills are framed as shaping how crypto markets will operate.

What to watch next

Investors and builders should focus on whether the Senate bill’s text becomes publicly available and whether lawmakers’ concerns—especially around ethics—are reflected in verifiable drafting. The next inflection point is not just whether CLARITY advances procedurally, but whether enough senators are willing to commit before any final vote amid ongoing questions about conflicts and the adequacy of proposed safeguards.

Spot market conditions have improved after months of weakness, with U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs shifting from persistent outflows to modest inflows. Still, the report cautioned that demand has yet to fully recover, with ETF flows and purchases by corporate bitcoin treasury companies such as Strategy (STR) remaining well below the levels seen earlier this year.

While bitcoin’s rebound has helped lift sentiment across the market after a difficult second quarter, Bitfinex cautioned that the recovery is “not yet healed.”

Bitcoin currently accounts for nearly 67% of spot crypto trading volume, up from roughly 50% a year ago, according to Bitfinex. The shift suggests investors continue to favor bitcoin over smaller tokens, a sign that traders remain defensive rather than embracing broad risk-taking.

‘Summer slumber’

Data from K33 Research paints a similar picture.

Head of research Vetle Lunde said institutional participation has continued to fade, with CME bitcoin futures open interest falling to its lowest level since 2023. Offshore perpetual futures positioning has remained largely unchanged, indicating speculative traders have been reluctant to add leverage despite bitcoin’s recent gains.

Spot trading activity has also stayed slow. Thirty-day bitcoin trading volume is running at just 62% of its annual average, according to K33, and late July has historically been the weakest period of the year. Average daily spot volume over the past week was roughly $2.3 billion, hovering near yearly lows even as prices recovered.

K33 described the backdrop as a “promising, and typical, summer slumber.”

Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.

All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.

Jack Mallers says he left Twenty One Capital voluntarily and with “no severance” despite collecting roughly $1.6 million in cash on the way out and over $2.2 million in total compensation. He also claims he forfeited his options.

In a statement issued hours after stepping down as CEO of the Tether-controlled BTC treasury company, Mallers claimed to have left “voluntarily” and mentioned his lack of severance and options as though that summarized the situation.

However, omitted from his post was his lavish, seven-figure separation agreement and the millions of dollars he made personally while common shareholders’ investment halved — at best — under his tenure.

Below are details about Mallers’ failure to accomplish a variety of business goals at Twenty One. However, we must first address his staggering compensation and its conspicuous omission from his social media.

Jack Mallers made over $2.2 million from Twenty One

As part of his separation package, Twenty One awarded Mallers a final $50,000 salary payment, which is apparently so “small” it doesn’t qualify as severance.

Twenty One is also paying him $420,455 for his “vested restricted shares,” plus an incredible $1,151,046 in cash to repurchase 226,860 of his shares at $5.23 apiece.

That’s more than $1.6 million in cash for Mallers to resign “voluntarily,” paid to a man who claims he took no severance and forfeited his options.

The company is also paying him out for shares above the current market, which is trading for less than $5 today.

The document never uses the word “severance,” which is presumably how Mallers can claim that he didn’t take any — the most incredible technicality.

Despite his seven-figure payday that was nowhere to be found on his social media, he did forfeit some extras.

The company cancelled his unvested options and restricted stock for nothing, and he kept 1,522,407 vested options with a $14.43 strike price, which are currently out-of-the-money due to Twenty One shares trading below $5.

Those options are the part he can safely call worthless. Of course, they were already out-of-the-money before he “forfeited” them.

Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found that dollar-backed stablecoins are creating a new form of “digital dollarization” that appears largely unaffected by capital controls, particularly in emerging markets.

The new study suggests governments may have less ability to curb stablecoin adoption than traditional foreign-currency bank deposits.

BIS researchers analyzed foreign-currency deposits and dollar-pegged stablecoin inflows across more than 130 economies, finding that both tend to increase during periods of macroeconomic stress. Unlike traditional bank deposits, however, stablecoin flows showed little response to capital controls or other FX restrictions. The authors said this likely occurs because “stablecoins are partly circulating outside the regulatory perimeter.”

Stablecoins could still undermine monetary sovereignty by allowing households and businesses to shift into dollars outside the banking system, particularly in emerging markets with weak currencies or limited access to reliable financial services, the study said.

Despite those risks, the researchers found little evidence that deposit dollarization weakens the transmission of monetary policy, though countries with higher foreign-currency deposits faced a somewhat greater risk of elevated inflation.

BIS said the findings suggest policymakers may need new tools to manage financial stability as stablecoins become more widely used, arguing that regulations designed for traditional banking and foreign-currency deposits may be less effective in a tokenized financial system.

Related: Japanese logistics company eyes JPYC stablecoin to pay drivers

Dollar-backed stablecoins expand in emerging economies

The findings come as use of stablecoins as a payment tool is growing in several emerging markets.

In its recent analysis of Nigeria, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found households and small businesses are using US dollar-pegged stablecoins for cross-border payments, remittances and access to dollar-denominated assets as inflation, currency depreciation and limited access to foreign exchange drive demand.

The IMF said stablecoins have reduced the cost and time required to move money across borders while expanding access to financial services for users outside the traditional banking system. At the same time, it warned that widespread adoption of dollar-backed tokens could weaken monetary sovereignty by reducing demand for local currencies and shifting more financial activity outside conventional banking channels.

Stablecoin adoption has accelerated across Latin America as well. Bitso Business, the enterprise payments arm of crypto exchange Bitso, reported an 81% year-over-year increase in stablecoin payment volume during the first half of 2026. The company also said that Circle’s USDC (USDT) and Tether’s USDT (USDT) accounted for 40% of all crypto purchases in the region in 2025, surpassing Bitcoin for the first time.

stablecoin market capitalization has increased to about $309.7 billion, up from roughly $260 billion a year ago.

Stablecoin market cap. Source: DefiLlama

Magazine: Binance & OKX users face $1,900 fines in Vietnam, Coinbase in China? Asia Express

MEXC has opened Bittensor’s TAO staking to its reported 40 million users through validator Yuma, adding exchange-based access to rewards from one of the largest decentralized artificial intelligence networks.

Yuma announced on Tuesday that its validator infrastructure now powers TAO staking on MEXC, allowing the exchange’s customers to delegate the token without moving their holdings to a separate Bittensor-compatible wallet.

Under the integration, Yuma will operate the validator infrastructure behind the service while MEXC provides the customer-facing staking product. The companies said the arrangement is designed to increase participation in Bittensor and make its staking system easier to access through a centralized exchange.

MEXC reports serving more than 40 million users in over 170 countries and regions. CoinMarketCap describes the company as a global exchange founded in 2018, while MEXC says its platform lists more than 3,000 cryptocurrencies across spot and derivatives markets.

For TAO holders, the new service removes several steps normally required to stake directly on Bittensor. According to Taostats documentation, direct staking involves transferring TAO to a supported wallet, selecting a validator and completing the delegation on the network.

Yuma’s role extends beyond processing those delegations. Within Bittensor, validators assess the output of miners across different subnets and assign weights that influence how the protocol distributes token emissions.

Each subnet operates as a specialized market for a particular digital service. According to Bittensor, those services can include machine-learning inference, model training, computing power, storage and prediction systems.

Exchange access removes barriers to TAO staking

Bittensor uses TAO as both its incentive token and the main asset supporting its staking system. Holders can delegate TAO to validators, which use their stake to participate in the network’s consensus process and allocate capital among subnets.

Rewards depend partly on validator performance and how those validators position stake across the network. Yuma’s infrastructure will handle that process for the TAO committed through MEXC, although the announcement did not disclose an expected annual yield, lock-up period, or minimum staking amount.

According to Bittensor’s network description, independent subnets compete to produce digital commodities while validators continually assess their relative value. The protocol calls this process Yuma Consensus, a system intended to align the incentives of token holders, validators and miners.

Bittensor’s ecosystem currently contains 128 subnets, according to the company. Individual projects focus on services including AI inference, coding assistants, financial modeling and model training, with token emissions distributed according to their measured contribution to the network.

The exchange integration also gives users an alternative to native subnet staking. CoinGecko explains that direct participation typically requires investors to buy TAO on an exchange, transfer it to a compatible wallet and then use a Bittensor interface to select a validator or exchange TAO for a subnet’s Alpha token.

MEXC and Yuma did not state whether users staking through the exchange would receive exposure to individual Alpha tokens. Their announcement identified TAO staking as the available product, with Yuma providing the underlying validator connection.

TAO traded near $199 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap data supplied with the announcement. The price gave Bittensor a market capitalization of about $1.91 billion, placing the token among the largest crypto assets linked to decentralized AI.

Governance concerns remain part of TAO’s market backdrop

Yuma’s partnership with MEXC follows its public criticism of Root Reborn, a proposed Bittensor governance overhaul intended to change how validators allocate capital and reduce continued selling of subnet tokens.

During TAO’s June pullback, Yuma argued that the proposal could turn validators from neutral network operators into active capital managers. The validator group warned that the model could encourage collusion, preferential treatment and frontrunning while pushing subnet developers to focus more heavily on validator relationships.

“Such a change could fundamentally alter the role of validators,” Yuma wrote in its assessment of the proposal.

Supporters of Root Reborn have presented the proposal as a possible response to pressure within Bittensor’s token structure. Critics, including Yuma, have raised concerns about concentrated governance power, strained liquidity and possible regulatory complications.

Those disagreements emerged as TAO suffered a sharp reversal in June. Crypto.news data showed that the token fell nearly 20% from its June 15 peak of about $283, reaching roughly $225 on June 19 as governance concerns, derivatives liquidations and weaker risk appetite weighed on the market.

Despite its objections to Root Reborn, Yuma has continued to support Bittensor as a validator. Its MEXC integration places the group behind a staking channel that can connect millions of exchange accounts to the network’s reward system, while the unresolved governance debate continues to shape how validators may operate in the future.

Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.

All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.

Telegram has announced plans to introduce a native, non-custodial Gram wallet to more than 1 billion monthly users this summer, enabling instant cryptocurrency transfers without fees.

Pavel Durov, writing on Telegram on Wednesday, described the planned integration as the “largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history.” The Telegram founder did not provide a fixed release date, list supported assets, or explain how the app would cover network costs while offering fee-free transfers.

Unlike a custodial service, the proposed wallet would let users control their crypto rather than leaving their assets with Telegram or another company. Durov’s announcement places the feature directly inside the messaging app, removing the need for users to download a separate wallet before sending funds to their contacts.

Telegram reported more than 1 billion monthly active users in 2025, giving the Gram wallet access to an audience few standalone crypto products can match. While Durov did not publish an adoption target, the company’s user count means even a small uptake could introduce millions of people to self-custody and peer-to-peer crypto transfers.

Exact launch conditions remain unclear because Telegram has not explained whether the wallet will become available worldwide at once or arrive through a phased release. The company has also not disclosed its recovery system, security safeguards, regional restrictions, or whether users will need to complete identity checks for certain services.

Gram wallet places distribution at the center of TON adoption

Telegram’s announcement follows The Open Network’s decision to rename its native Toncoin token as Gram, restoring the name used in Telegram’s original 2018 blockchain white paper. Durov presented the change as a return to the project’s early identity, while TON has stated that the blockchain itself will retain The Open Network name.

According to reporting from crypto.news, the token transition was scheduled to take about three weeks and did not require holders to swap their existing coins. The publication reported that Gram climbed as much as 19% after Durov disclosed the change, reaching $2.21 as traders reacted to Telegram’s renewed involvement.

Gram’s return carries regulatory history because Telegram previously used the name for the token attached to its first blockchain project. After Telegram raised $1.7 billion from investors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued the company in 2019 and alleged that its planned token distribution involved unregistered securities.

Under a 2020 settlement cited by the SEC, Telegram agreed to return more than $1.2 billion to investors and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty. Telegram then withdrew from the project, while independent developers continued the open-source code that eventually became the present TON network.

Since leaving the original project, Telegram has gradually brought TON-based services into its app. The Financial Times reported that Telegram advertising can be purchased with the network’s token, while creators can receive crypto payments and developers can build games, stores, and other services tied to TON.

Durov has also promoted investment in the network. He reported in 2025 that venture capital firms had invested more than $400 million in Toncoin, naming groups including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Ribbit Capital, Draper Associates, and Vy Capital.

TON is extending wallet control to automated Telegram services

TON’s payment plans have expanded beyond person-to-person transfers through an Agentic Wallets standard introduced by TON Tech on April 28. As crypto.news reported in May, the system allows AI agents operating through Telegram bots to control user-funded wallets and carry out limited financial actions.

TON Tech described the products as “self-custody wallets designed for autonomous AI agents on TON.” Under its documentation, a user funds an agent’s separate on-chain wallet and grants permission to perform selected tasks, including transfers, token swaps, and interactions with decentralized finance applications.

Control remains tied to the user’s main wallet, according to TON Tech, which allows the owner to set a spending budget, withdraw the remaining balance, or cancel the agent’s access. The infrastructure team said no intermediary holds the funds and existing TON wallets do not require an upgrade because the design uses a standard smart-contract structure.

Agentic Wallets and the planned Gram wallet serve different functions, but TON Tech’s April release shows how the network is building payment tools for both people and automated services inside Telegram. The main Gram wallet would give users direct control over routine transfers, while the agent standard assigns limited permissions to bots without handing them master keys.

Telegram has yet to disclose whether the summer wallet will connect directly with Agentic Wallets or other TON-based products. Until the company publishes technical documentation and rollout terms, Durov’s announcement establishes the intended scale and fee model but leaves the wallet’s security, availability, and complete feature set unresolved.