Bitcoin BTC$62,880.24 dropped below $63,000, losing 1.14% since midnight UTC as a second day of outflows from spot exchange-traded funds and a lack of bullish catalysts weighed on the crypto market.

Spot bitcoin ETFs experienced the first back-to-back days of outflows since late July with $192 million exiting the products, according to SoSoValue.

The largest cryptocurrency is now trading at its lowest point since Aug. 3 having wiped out all of last week’s rally. Ether ETH$1,875.59 is down by 0.73% since midnight, while a portion of the altcoin market continues to show resilience, outperforming crypto majors.

U.S. equities were boosted on Thursday by producer price inflation data, which cooled to 4.7%, below forecasts. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both rallied following the report, and futures on the indexes remain marginally in the black.

Derivatives positioning

• Futures churn continues: While the crypto market is under pressure, the long-short taker ratio in futures remains balanced, with longs accounting for half of the flow. 24-hour volume growth is again outpacing open interest (OI) growth by a wide margin. That’s a sign of churn rather than fresh positioning.
• BCH sees heaviest fresh shorting: Futures tied to Bitcoin Cash BCH$205.55 are the biggest OI gainer of the past 24 hours, adding 10% to 1.64 million tokens as the spot price drops 3%. That combination points to short positions being built up. Deeply negative annualized funding rates support that interpretation. The 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative too, signaling that shorts are trading more aggressively via market orders rather than passive limit orders. Together, these signals point to positioning for a deeper selloff in the token.
• BTC OI rises alongside falling price: Bitcoin is another OI gainer, with the tally rising over 3% to 765,000 BTC alongside a negative CVD. Annualized funding rates, however, still hold mildly positive.
• HBAR shows the clearest bearish tilt: The token’s 24-hour CVD is the most negative among the top 25 coins, with funding rates around -20%, pointing to a market clearly dominated by bears. More broadly, all the top 25 are showing negative CVD.
• Bitcoin volatility cools: BTC’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, fell back below 36%, erasing a spike to nearly 39% earlier this week. That points to continued investor interest in overwriting strategies — approaches aimed at generating extra yield on top of spot holdings. Ether’s equivalent index, EVIV, is showing the same pattern.
• Options positioning stays mixed: On Deribit, BTC calls at the $70,000, $69,000 and $67,000 strikes rank among the five most-traded bets. For ETH, puts at the $1,700 and $1,780 strikes ranked higher instead.

Token talk

• Ether.fi (ETHFI) is the standout performer over the past 24 hours, rallying by 11.5% after adding tokenized stocks and DeFi loans to its neobank platform. The token gave back some of the gains on Friday, dropping 3.3%.
• Cosmos ATOM$1.5386 also experienced upside. The token surged by more than 10% in 24 hours and trading volume jumped by 232% to $51 million despite the absence of a clear news catalyst.
• Fetch.ai FET$0.1361 and monero (XMR) extended their positive weeks, rising 0.55% and 0.81%, respectively, since midnight UTC.
• NEAR, MORPHO, TAO and JUP all lost around 2% since midnight as cautious sentiment remains the dominant theme across the crypto market.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser has backed passage of the CLARITY Act while continuing to push for changes to its stablecoin reward rules, keeping the banking industry’s main concern with the crypto bill alive ahead of a Senate procedural vote expected next month.

Fraser told Fox Business on Thursday that Citigroup still wants lawmakers to improve parts of the legislation, but she supports getting a workable version through Congress because she believes the bill would benefit the financial system.

“So, we have not given up on pushing to get some improvements made to the bill, but we would like to see a good bill go through,” Fraser said. “I think it would be excellent for the system.”

Her support puts Citigroup in a less confrontational position than some other large banks, even as Fraser shares their concern over whether crypto platforms should be allowed to offer rewards tied to stablecoins.

Citigroup CEO says stablecoin rewards could affect bank deposits

Fraser’s main concern centers on the effect that stablecoin rewards could have on deposits held by U.S. banks, particularly institutions that rely on those funds to finance lending in communities with fewer credit options.

“If you are having a reward system on deposits, it could have a detrimental impact on their deposits, and therefore their ability to provide lending and access to credit in parts of the U.S. that crypto won’t reach, and frankly, the large banks don’t reach,” Fraser said. “So, I am worried about it from that perspective.”

Banking groups have made a similar argument during negotiations over the CLARITY Act. In July, the American Bankers Association, Independent Community Bankers of America and 76 state banking associations asked Senate leaders to tighten Section 404 before the legislation reached the floor.

As crypto.news reported in July, the groups warned that unclear reward provisions could encourage customers to move money from traditional bank accounts into payment stablecoins, reducing the deposits available to community lenders.

The dispute stems partly from the way stablecoin rewards are structured. The GENIUS Act, passed in 2025, prevents payment stablecoin issuers from directly paying interest or yield to holders. Crypto exchanges and other service providers, however, have used rewards programs that can pass benefits to users through arrangements not directly offered by the stablecoin issuer.

Banking groups have argued that customers may see little practical difference between interest paid by a bank and rewards received for keeping stablecoins on a crypto platform.

CLARITY Act compromise allows activity-based rewards

Senators Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., have tried to address the dispute through compromise language that separates passive yield from rewards linked to actual platform activity.

The proposal bars platforms from paying rewards simply because a customer holds a stablecoin. It still permits certain incentives connected with transactions, payments and other qualifying activities.

The compromise language circulated among crypto and banking representatives earlier this year after Tillis and Alsobrooks reached an agreement in principle in March. The draft prohibited passive yield while retaining activity-based rewards tied to payments, transfers or platform use.

A revised 309-page version released by the Senate Banking Committee in May retained that basic structure, allowing activity-based stablecoin rewards while prohibiting passive yield for simply holding the asset.

Lawmakers developed the language after months of disagreement between banks and crypto companies over whether third-party rewards would undermine the restrictions already placed on stablecoin issuers.

Banking groups remained dissatisfied after the compromise emerged. The American Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, Consumer Bankers Association, Financial Services Forum and Independent Community Bankers of America said in May that the revised provisions still did not adequately protect deposits.

The groups argued that incentives calculated using factors such as balances or holding periods could function much like deposit interest even if they were formally presented as rewards.

Crypto companies have taken the opposite position, arguing that restrictions extending beyond passive interest would prevent platforms from rewarding customers for legitimate activity.

Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said during the May negotiations that banks had secured tighter restrictions while the compromise preserved rewards tied to actual use of crypto platforms and networks.

Stablecoin yield fight has divided banks and crypto firms

The dispute has become one of the most persistent issues surrounding the CLARITY Act, with banking organizations warning about deposit losses while crypto firms have pushed to preserve rewards that do not amount to passive interest.

Earlier this year, banking groups stepped up their lobbying as lawmakers prepared the legislation for Senate consideration. An American Bankers Association campaign sent thousands of messages to Senate offices as the industry sought changes to the stablecoin provisions.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has previously estimated that as much as $6 trillion could eventually move from bank deposits into stablecoins under a regulatory structure that lets the tokens compete more directly for customer cash.

The banking industry’s concerns extend to the lending consequences of such an outflow. Banks use deposits as a source of funding for mortgages, business loans and other credit, while stablecoin reserves are commonly held in cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and similar liquid assets.

Crypto industry representatives dispute the scale of the risk. The White House Council of Economic Advisers challenged the deposit argument in April, estimating that prohibiting stablecoin yield would increase traditional bank lending by about $2.1 billion, or roughly 0.02% of total loans.

The council estimated that 76% of the additional lending associated with a yield ban would flow through large banks, undercutting claims that restrictions were primarily needed to protect smaller community institutions.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has also argued that banks are seeking to limit competition from stablecoins. During the negotiations, he accused large banks of trying to prevent consumers from receiving returns generated by stablecoin reserve assets.

Under the 2025 GENIUS Act framework, issuers must maintain qualifying reserves for payment stablecoins and cannot directly pay holders interest. Platforms such as Coinbase have offered rewards through separate programs, making the treatment of third-party incentives a central issue in the CLARITY Act talks.

Jamie Dimon has taken a harder position on the CLARITY Act

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has gone further than Fraser in opposing the legislation as currently written.

During a Fox Business interview in May, Dimon said banks would fight the CLARITY Act because he believed its stablecoin provisions allowed crypto firms to provide interest-like returns without protections comparable to those imposed on banks. He said the industry would continue opposing the legislation even if it ultimately lost the vote.

Dimon also criticized Armstrong’s lobbying campaign during the interview, calling the Coinbase CEO “full of sh–” after the host referred to Armstrong’s claim that he represented the crypto industry’s position.

Fraser’s comments leave Citigroup supporting passage while seeking changes to the same issue that has driven much of the banking industry’s opposition.

The next procedural test is expected after lawmakers return from the Senate’s August recess. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has scheduled a cloture vote for Sept. 15, moving the initial vote into September after earlier delays.

World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency project backed by the Trump family, delayed plans to sell a token related to a resort in the Maldives, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

The token was planned to go on sale next year, giving investors a share of revenue from loans financing the Trump-branded resort, but this has been pushed back due to the Iran war disrupting travel in the region, according to the report, citing people familiar with the matter.

World Liberty Financial tapped real-world asset (RWAs) platform Securitize in February to help represent loan interests tied to the resort’s development as a digital token that could be traded onchain.

It is unclear when the token will now be listed.

The venture is part World Liberty Financial’s plans in tokenization, the representation of RWAs on blockchains in token form. WLFI is exploring this concept not just in real estate, but in commodities like oil and gas.

A World Liberty Financial spokesperson declined to comment, according to Bloomberg’s report. The company did not immediately respond when contacted by CoinDesk for additional comment.

The protocol’s native token WLFI rose by 2.7% on the news before giving back all of the gains and returning to parity. It is now down by 88.5% from its record high in September, 2025.

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.

Scan the news and there are plenty of reasons for worry: continued U.S.-Iran escalation risks, mounting sovereign debt and rising bond yields among them. Crypto carries its own set of concerns, including regulatory disappointments, weak demand and hack risks.

Yet crypto, stocks, bonds and even commodity markets remain sanguine. That is clear from implied-volatility readings across these markets. Implied volatility is a measure of expected price turbulence, and is calculated from the demand for options and other derivatives used to hedge against wild swings and uncertainty.

Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, has dropped back to a 2026-low near 36%, reversing the minor pop to nearly 38% earlier this week, according to data source TradingView. The same is true for ether, the second-largest digital asset market value.

Wall Street’s VIX index, often called a “fear gauge” tracking uncertainty and volatility in the S&P 500, has declined to the lowest level since January. The Treasury market equivalent, MOVE, is also under pressure, hovering near the lower end of its multi-month range of 66% to 84%. Even gold and oil volatility indexes are falling.