Crypto World
Anthropic Stake Drives This AI Hedge Fund to $20 Billion and 270% Gains
A 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher has turned a gloomy essay about artificial intelligence into one of the hottest trades on Wall Street. Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, now manages about $20 billion.
The fund gained roughly 270% after fees this year through May, according to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal. In plain terms, money left there in January would have nearly quadrupled by spring.
The Big Idea, Explained Simply
Think of the AI boom as a gold rush. Aschenbrenner is not betting on who finds the most gold. He is betting on whoever sells the shovels.
His shovels are electricity and computers. Powerful AI needs huge amounts of both. He argues those physical limits, not clever software, will decide who gets rich.
He laid this out in a 165-page essay in 2024, and it went viral. Some of the shovel sellers he favors are Bitcoin miners hosting AI instead of mining coins.
What the AI Hedge Fund Actually Owns
His biggest public holding is Bloom Energy, a company that makes fuel cells to generate power on site. He also owns CoreWeave, which rents out AI computing power, plus several former mining data centers now running AI.
Here is the clever twist. While betting on power, he is also betting against the chipmakers everyone loves. He has wagered more than $1.5 billion that Nvidia’s stock will fall, and over $2 billion against a basket of chip stocks.
Traders call these short bets. His reasoning is simple. Chip prices already assume everything goes perfectly, while the real shortage will be electricity.
The Anthropic Jackpot
His single largest position is not a stock at all. It is a private slice of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot.
He bought in during February 2025, when Anthropic was worth about $60 billion. By May 2026 that price tag had jumped to $965 billion after a fresh funding round. That one bet now makes up roughly a fifth of the whole fund.
His firm even shows up among Anthropic’s listed investors, and the AI maker has since moved toward an Anthropic confidential IPO.
Jane Street, a secretive trading giant that rarely backs outsiders, has also put money into the fund.
The Catch
Betting big on one idea cuts both ways. If companies slow their AI spending or the power crunch eases, the fund could fall just as fast as it rose.
That same risk hangs over Bitcoin miner AI stocks across the board.
For now the wager is paying off, and much rides on whether Anthropic’s soaring private valuation holds up. The coming months will show whether shovels really do beat gold.
The post Anthropic Stake Drives This AI Hedge Fund to $20 Billion and 270% Gains appeared first on BeInCrypto.
South Korea’s KOSPI index fell 8.95% on July 13 after an intraday circuit breaker was triggered, with chipmaker SK Hynix dropping more than 15%.
The market shock has raised concerns that a wider risk-off move could spread into US equities and crypto assets already facing pressure from geopolitical tensions and weaker sentiment.
KOSPI Crash Sends Risk Signals Across Global Markets
Market data shows that the KOSPI closed at 6,806.93 on Monday after its circuit breaker was activated during trading. In that same session, SK Hynix fell 15.37% to KRW 1.845 million, leaving the stock about 38% below the record high it hit just a couple of weeks ago on June 25.
Hupzy from Spot On Chain described the move as a panic-driven selloff and noted that circuit breakers are uncommon outside periods of severe market stress. The analyst also linked the drop in SK Hynix to a rapid reversal in the artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor trade, warning that weakness in those sectors could affect crypto assets connected to AI narratives.
Recall that even before the selloff, the markets were already dealing with broader uncertainty, with more than $1.5 trillion erased across assets in 10 hours, including Bitcoin (BTC), gold, and silver, as well as other major Asian stock indexes. At the time of writing, BTC had slipped below $63,000, having recovered from an early July drop below $58,000 and briefly going past $64,000 before it lost ground again.
Analyst Ash Crypto blamed the losses on new hostilities between the US and Iran, a possible Bank of Japan yen intervention, and rising bond yields, with Hupzy stating that the sort of shock caused by the KOSPI plunge could push BTC through support if US equities get dragged down by their Asian counterparts.
“For BTC: broadening equity panic puts downside pressure on crypto risk assets,” they wrote on X. “If US markets follow Asia lower, expect crypto selling to intensify. The KOSPI crash is the kind of cross-asset shock that can break correlations and drag BTC below support.”
However, another market watcher, Michaël van de Poppe, posted that Bitcoin’s price action was “holding up well” despite the pressure, saying it had tested the $65,000 area while maintaining support around $61,000. Fellow analyst Ted Pillows warned that the OG crypto needed to hold the $62,500 zone after repeated failures near the $64,500 to $65,000 resistance level, or it could drop below $61,000.
Why the Cash on the Sidelines Might Not Show Up
The KOSPI decline has added to concerns about how much support global markets have if selling pressure continues. Hedgie Markets shared data showing that US cash holdings, including money market funds and bank deposits, had fallen to just 0.42 of the S&P 500’s market cap, near the lowest level ever recorded and close to where it sat before the dot-com crash.
The account also noted that while money market funds hold a record $7.95 trillion, the S&P 500 had grown to roughly $69 trillion, so the dry powder looks smaller against the market it needs to cushion.
The post South Korea Stock Crash Could Drag Bitcoin Below Key Support: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Bolivia is evaluating integrating Tether’s USDt into its national payments system, a move that could mark one of Latin America’s most significant stablecoin adoption initiatives as the country grapples with a persistent shortage of US dollars.
Economy and Public Finance Minister Jose Gabriel Espinoza told a press conference on Monday that the government is assessing a regulatory framework that would allow USDT to circulate “as just another currency,” alongside the boliviano and the US dollar.
According to the Spanish news outlet CriptoNoticias, the framework is still under review and, if adopted, would recognize USDT for everyday transactions, including payments, savings and trade, without relying exclusively on cash or the traditional banking system.
Espinoza said any rollout would require a robust regulatory framework and strong anti-money laundering safeguards because Bolivia remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, which identifies jurisdictions under increased monitoring for deficiencies in preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.
Source: EL DEBER
The proposal is part of Bolivia’s broader embrace of digital assets following the lifting of its longstanding ban on cryptocurrencies in 2024. Since taking office in late 2025, President Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s administration has pledged to integrate digital assets into the formal financial system, paving the way for banks to offer crypto-related products and services, including stablecoin-based accounts.
USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization exceeding $184 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Related: USDT wins payments, USDC wins DeFi as stablecoins diverge: Dune
Dollar shortage fuels stablecoin push
Bolivia’s stablecoin initiative comes as the country grapples with a prolonged shortage of US dollars, which are widely used alongside the national currency, the boliviano.
As Reuters reported, Bolivia maintained an official exchange rate of 6.86 bolivianos per US dollar for purchases and 6.96 for sales from 2011 until earlier this year, when mounting pressure on foreign exchange reserves forced the government to abandon the long-standing peg. The resulting dollar shortage fueled the expansion of a parallel foreign exchange market, where the dollar traded at a steep premium to the official rate.
The widening gap between the official and parallel exchange rates has boosted demand for dollar-denominated alternatives, including stablecoins such as USDT, which have increasingly been used for payments.
Bolivia ranked highly in Chainalysis’ 2025 evaluation of crypto adoption across Latin America, with $14.8 billion in total transaction volume over a 12-month period.
Bitcoin (BTC) slipped toward $62,600 on Monday while oil jumped about 4%, after the United States and Iran traded strikes over the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump said Washington would take control of the waterway.
Oil climbed on supply fears while Bitcoin sold off as a risk asset. US crude reached $75.24 and Brent topped $79. Traders feared a longer disruption to a critical oil chokepoint.
Bitcoin Slips as Oil Climbs on Hormuz Plan
Bitcoin fell from a session high above $64,000 to around $62,565 on Monday. Oil ran the other way, rising about 4% as the US and Iran exchanged missile and drone attacks. Traders watched Bitcoin’s latest price swings against the oil bid all day.
The strait is why a threat there moves markets. About 20 million barrels of oil cross it daily, roughly a fifth of global consumption, the EIA says. That is close to a quarter of all seaborne oil.
Shipping is already thinning. Just six vessels crossed the strait in one recent 12-hour window. That is down from 18 to 22 a day earlier this month, tracking data showed.
Bitcoin has traded like a risk asset throughout. It slid again after Trump ended a fragile truce with Iran last week, the same move that lifted oil.
Trump Wants 20% on Cargo Through Hormuz
On Truth Social, Trump said the US would guard the strait and be repaid for the cost. He proposed a 20% fee on all cargo shipped through it. He later said Washington would probably run it.
“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran… The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”… reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped…” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
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Iran rejected any US role. Its top military command said it would resist any attempt to route traffic without Tehran’s coordination. Iran calls the waterway closed, while Western navies insist it stays open.
The fee would break with how the US has long patrolled the strait for free. It also inverts a June truce that had barred Iran from charging ships.
Higher transit costs could feed inflation. That backdrop kept Bitcoin near $60,000 for weeks, while calmer Iran signals had recently pulled bond yields lower.
Dubai Builds for a Future Beyond Hormuz
The bigger story sits east of the strait. Dubai’s DP World is in talks to build a container port at Fujairah, a report said. It would sit on the Gulf of Oman, outside the chokepoint.
That marks a shift for Dubai. Its flagship Jebel Ali is the region’s largest port. Yet it sits inside the Gulf and depends on Hormuz for access.
The UAE now wants to cut its reliance on the strait to zero. It is expanding east coast ports at Fujairah, Khor Fakkan and Dibba, all on the Gulf of Oman.
“We’re moving towards having zero Hormuz dependency and that’s regardless of whether it’s open or not,” said Thani Al Zeyoudi, UAE minister of foreign trade.
The buildout is underway. Gulftainer is spending $2 billion to expand Khor Fakkan to 10 million containers a year, nearly triple its current size. That terminal alone could handle most UAE cargo if Hormuz shut.
The energy side is moving too. The UAE has piped crude around Hormuz since 2012. A second line will roughly double that bypass capacity by 2027.
The moves suggest businesses expect Hormuz to stay a flashpoint, whoever secures it. A Fujairah route would also sidestep any US transit fee, not just Iranian threats. Over time, that could chip away at the strait’s leverage over global trade.
For crypto, the signal is simple. As long as Hormuz can move oil, it can move Bitcoin. Risk assets stayed jumpy on Monday, and traders now watch the strait as closely as any chart.
The post Bitcoin and Oil Respond to Trump’s US Hormuz Control Plan, But Dubai Mulls a Bypass appeared first on BeInCrypto.
The meme coin remains stuck in a heavy downtrend caused by the prolonged bear market and other negative factors.
Despite the grim conditions, Shiba Inu’s holders base continues to rise, recently reaching a new all-time high.
The New Record
The total number of SHIB wallets has been rising slowly recently, but at the beginning of the month there was a sharp jump. According to the X account BSCN, the meme coin saw an explosive jump of almost 75,000 new holders between July 5 and July 6 – far above its typical daily growth.
It remains unclear why the figure soared so sharply, as some speculate there might have been a technical glitch. In any case, the total number currently stands at 1,676,535, which is a new all-time high.
The growing figure contrasts with the plummeting price of Shiba Inu. As of this writing, it trades at around $0.0000042, reflecting a 15% plunge on a monthly scale and a staggering 95% crash from the historic peak witnessed in 2021.
SHIB remains the second-largest meme coin, but only thanks to the double-digit collapse MemeCore (M) recently experienced. The market capitalization of the self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer has tumbled below $2.5 billion, making it the 36th-biggest cryptocurrency.
Further Slump Incoming?
The rising number of SHIB wallets is perhaps the only real glimmer of optimism for Shiba Inu lately. Its burning mechanism, which saw a major resurgence last week, has once again slowed, while Shibarium’s activity has fallen to near-idle levels.
The layer-2 scaling solution, designed to enhance Shiba Inu’s ecosystem by boosting speed, lowering transaction fees, and improving scalability, initially processed millions of transactions on a daily basis. Over the past months (especially after Shibarium’s exploit last year), those have tumbled to mere thousands and hundreds.
These negative factors, combined with the fading interest in the meme coin, suggest that bulls might have to suffer more pain in the near future. According to BSCN, SHIB’s daily trading volume was close to $700 million a year ago, but today (July 13) it is struggling to reach $50 million.
The sentiment among analysts and industry participants is also particularly negative. Recently, popular trader James Wynn described SHIB as “old, dead, and boring,” suggesting it may not recover for another 5-10 years until nostalgia potentially brings it back.
The post Key Shiba Inu Metric Reaches a New ATH, Yet SHIB’s Price Keeps Sliding: Details appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Michael Saylor spent Monday morning boasting about a bigger pile of cash to support dividends, yet the dividend-paying shares of STRC he intended to reassure barely budged.
The problem seems to be confidence, not cash.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), the largest publicly-traded holder of BTC, diluted its common stockholders last week to increase its dollar stockpile by $450 million.
Now holding $3 billion, MSTR shareholders paid for 17% more cash than the $2.55 billion balance it last disclosed as of July 5.
More cash should mean more comfort. However, investors in STRC, the dividend-yielding preferred stock that requires cash for semi-monthly payouts, don’t seem to agree.
By this morning, STRC had actually dropped to $86.60, a decline of 1% versus Friday’s closing price.
Even though Strategy’s larger cash reserve should pay for more months of STRC dividends — the kind of news that should boost confidence in any other security — it didn’t boost STRC.
There seems to be another problem at Strategy that cash can’t solve.
The market shrugged
Strategy was supposed to keep the price of STRC boring. Instead, its wild fluctuations are generating daily headlines.
The company adjusts the dividend regularly with a stated objective to keep the stock trading between $99 and $100. It hasn’t.
When the price sags, Strategy raises dividend payouts to lure buyers back toward its $100 par. When the price is higher, Strategy sells shares to cap the price.
Unfortunately, STRC has actually declined in value since its dividend rate has climbed from 9% at launch to 12% currently.
Moreover, even with 20 months of cash providing so-called “dividend coverage” and a yield far richer than most junk bonds, STRC was trading 13% below par today.
The price of STRC is actually lower today than before Strategy increased its cash by 17%.
So, what gives?
The mechanism driving the price of STRC lower is far simpler than the quantity of cash or the mathematics of Strategy’s dilution or leverage ratios.
The problem appears to be confidence. Without a rally in BTC to boost the value of Strategy’s massive treasury, investors have only one reason to bid up STRC back to par: Belief in management’s resolve to fund long-term dividends.
Sadly, there are plenty of reasons to doubt their resolve.
A preferred share is a promise to pay dividends, honor terms, and perform what the prospectus says. In addition, investors base their decisions on guidance and forward-looking statements from management.
Investors aren’t discounting STRC because they doubt the existence of $3 billion in cash or the mathematics of how many months that quantity could service in dividend payouts. They’re discounting the man making the promises about those payouts.
Read more: Strategy’s STRC hit another all-time low today
Michael Saylor’s shifting promises
Strategy founder Saylor has a long record of forecasts he later abandoned. Each reversal teaches the market to price his assurances below face value.
For example, last summer, Strategy told investors it wouldn’t issue new MSTR shares below 2.5 times its BTC multiple-to-net asset value (mNAV), except to pay interest and preferred dividends.
Days later, it quietly rewrote that promise, adding a third exception for whenever it deemed issuances advantageous. It then sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock below 2.5x mNAV anyway.
Consider another, egregious example.
For years, Saylor preached about never selling BTC, a mantra Protos has catalogued across his interviews and posts.
However, over late June and early July, Strategy sold 3,588 BTC and authorized over $1 billion in additional sales. The examples continue.
Saylor spent early 2026 assuring markets that debt, not BTC sales, would carry the company through any BTC bear market.
He told CNBC the company would simply refinance and extend its obligations during a BTC bear market. A few months later, he wasn’t refinancing but instead selling BTC to fund dividend payments.
Saylor has also slashed his own earnings forecast, which makes trusting his future forecasts difficult. In December, Strategy cut its fiscal year 2025 earnings per share guidance from a target of $80 per share to a revised range to less than $19.
That erased hopes of more than 76% of the profit it had projected.
Read more: Strategy’s ‘stable’ STRC spends a lot of time below its $100 target
Despite promises, STRC is nothing like a bank account
Saylor has also likened STRC to a high-yield bank account or money market.
Nevertheless, STRC sank to an all-time low of $71.25 in June, losing many savers one-third of their savings, unlike any insured bank account or money market.
After Saylor’s guidance about STRC’s $100 stability confronted the reality of $71.25 and everybody had lost money, it became difficult to maintain confidence in his ability to forecast future stability for STRC.
STRC isn’t any kind of bank account or money market, isn’t backed by segregated BTC, and carries no ordinary redemption right. In order for investors to sell STRC for $100, they must find other traders who are willing to buy it from them at $100.
Strategy won’t be bidding.
The pattern of shifting promises is older than Strategy’s BTC era. In 2000, the SEC charged Saylor and two other executives.
The company had allegedly inflated its reported sales and profit in breach of accounting rules. Saylor paid more than $8 million to settle that civil action.
Decades later, the market re-learning to be wary of the same man. Strategy just added 17% more cash to a reserve meant to keep STRC pinned at $100. Despite this, STRC failed to rally, staying 13% below par this morning and actually declining relative to Friday.
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Hyundai Motor’s U.S. and Mexican operations have completed a pilot cross-border treasury payment using Tether’s USDT stablecoin, settling a $20,000 transfer in about seven minutes over the Avalanche blockchain.
Summary
- Hyundai completed a $20,000 USDT treasury transfer between the U.S. and Mexico in about seven minutes.
- The Avalanche-based pilot tested stablecoin settlement without changing existing treasury compliance and accounting processes.
- Tether continues expanding its enterprise strategy through corporate pilots and recent investments in blockchain infrastructure.
According to Tether, the proof-of-concept involved Hyundai Motor America converting U.S. dollars into USDT before sending the stablecoin to Hyundai Motor Mexico, where it was converted back into U.S. dollars.
Tether said the transfer, including verification, took around seven minutes, while a conventional cross-border bank transfer would typically require three to four hours or longer.
The pilot tested stablecoins inside corporate treasury operations
Supporting the pilot, Tether said Axiym supplied the settlement infrastructure, while Hyundai Card designed the remittance structure and managed the regulatory, compliance, accounting and operational requirements needed for the test.
According to Tether, the companies built the trial to determine whether stablecoin settlement could fit into existing corporate treasury processes without requiring changes to governance, compliance or accounting frameworks.
The next stage will extend testing to additional payment corridors and local currency settlements, according to Tether, as the participating companies evaluate stablecoin settlement across more enterprise treasury workflows.
Corporate treasury has become one of the fastest-growing areas for stablecoin adoption. In April, treasury management software provider Kyriba partnered with Circle to integrate the USDC stablecoin into its enterprise treasury platform.
According to the companies, treasury teams can manage stablecoin balances alongside cash positions, complete eligible cross-border and intercompany payments in near real time, and access liquidity outside normal banking hours while continuing to use existing treasury approval processes.
A separate report from Bitso Business, published this month, found stablecoin transaction volumes on its platform rose 81% year over year during the first half of 2026.
According to Bitso Business, the increase came from demand for real-time settlement, treasury management and cross-border liquidity solutions. The company added that more than 60% of newly onboarded business clients during the period were financial institutions, including banks and licensed payment providers.
Tether continues expanding its enterprise strategy
Business adoption surveys also indicate rising corporate interest in stablecoins. According to a June report by Paybis, 22.5% of surveyed businesses already use stablecoins for international payments or expect to do so within the next 12 months.
The report, citing McKinsey research, said business-to-business transactions accounted for roughly 60% of the estimated $390 billion in global stablecoin payment volume recorded during 2025.
DefiLlama data shows the stablecoin market has continued to expand alongside that adoption. According to the analytics platform, total stablecoin market capitalization has reached about $312.3 billion, up roughly 21.5% from $257.1 billion a year earlier, with Tether’s USDT remaining the largest stablecoin by market value.
The Hyundai pilot arrives as Tether continues investing in blockchain infrastructure and enterprise finance. As previously reported by crypto.news, the company invested $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin on July 7 to support the Brazilian digital asset platform’s expansion into tokenized assets, blockchain payments, lending and on-chain capital markets.
Tether said it is prioritizing companies that combine regulatory approvals with blockchain infrastructure capable of serving institutional demand.
Recent activity has extended beyond Latin America. During June, Tether announced plans to lead a funding round of up to $1.4 billion for German robotics company NEURA Robotics, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre on tokenization initiatives and blockchain education, and confirmed it would discontinue Alloy by Tether and its aUSDT token following a review of market demand and platform usage.
Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao just denied rumors of secretly backing meme coins on BNB Chain, after sending 400 million spam tokens worth $1.6 million to a burn address.
The transfers sparked manipulation theories, but on-chain data reveals a routine cleanup that has been repeating for years.
Inside CZ’s $1.6 Million Token Cleanup
A burn address is a wallet without an accessible private key, so any tokens sent to it are removed from circulation forever. About a day ago, CZ moved roughly 400 million units of third-party tokens into one of these addresses.
Furthermore, the batch totaled $1.6 million. Moreover, the destination was the well-known dead address starting with 0x000, a common target for permanent token removal.
The crypto community reacted fast. On-chain researchers flagged the transfers, and theories about market manipulation quickly began circulating. However, CZ promptly clarified on X that he was simply clearing out digital garbage accumulated in his public wallet.
“I simply hadn’t checked that wallet in a long time; when I opened it, I discovered there were too many tokens (tens of thousands), and the software interface wasn’t very user-friendly. I made a suggestion and then ran a test. Instead of sending it to my address, it’s better to send it directly to a ‘black hole’ address; it saves a step and is more direct and effective: 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD,” CZ said on X.
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The explanation points to a long-running problem. Creators of third-party projects had been sending spam tokens to his address for years, chasing free publicity.
As a result, the wallet interface eventually stopped displaying his balance correctly, forcing the manual cleanup.
Additionally, burning the tokens directly removes clutter in a single step, without selling or transferring each asset individually.
Why Do Projects Send Spam Tokens to Famous Wallets
The most famous precedent involved Vitalik Buterin in 2021. Shiba Inu’s team transferred an enormous share of the supply to the Ethereum co-founder without asking him. Instead of validating the project, he burned 90% of those holdings and publicly asked developers to abandon the practice.
CZ now faces the same dynamic on a recurring basis. According to Arkham, his wallet has absorbed unwanted tokens for years, forcing periodic purges of ever-increasing size. Altogether, the Binance founder has erased more than $6.24 million in spam assets over the past twelve months.
The takeaway is straightforward. The transfers carry no hidden market signal and reflect maintenance rather than manipulation.
Zhao even joked that depositing tokens into his wallet works like a shortcut to a black hole. As a result, projects hoping for free promotion simply watch their tokens vanish faster.
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The post Binance Founder Moves Millions in Meme Coins to a Burn Address appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Bolivia is exploring a path to place Tether’s USDT inside its domestic payments framework, as the country searches for ways to operate in an environment where US dollars remain scarce. If the plan advances, USDT could be treated as a currency option alongside the boliviano and the US dollar—an approach aimed at supporting everyday transactions such as payments, saving, and trade.
Economy and Public Finance Minister Jose Gabriel Espinoza said during a Monday press conference that the government is assessing a regulatory structure that would allow USDT to circulate “as just another currency.” However, the minister also warned that any rollout depends on strong safeguards, including anti-money laundering controls, given that Bolivia remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list for deficiencies related to preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.
Key takeaways
- Bolivia’s finance ministry is evaluating whether USDT can be recognized for retail use in the national payments system.
- Officials say USDT would need a comprehensive regulatory and compliance framework due to Bolivia’s FATF grey-list status.
- The proposal follows changes in Bolivia’s stance on cryptocurrencies since its long-standing ban was lifted in 2024.
- Broader demand for dollar-denominated alternatives has intensified as Bolivia struggled with a persistent US dollar shortage and exchange-rate pressures.
- Tether is likely central to the idea given USDT’s scale as the largest stablecoin by market capitalization.
USDT as “another currency” in Bolivia’s payments system
According to reporting by CriptoNoticias, the regulatory framework under review would potentially recognize USDT for everyday use, including payments and other common financial activities. The government’s stated goal is to avoid tying usage exclusively to cash or the traditional banking channel, which can be difficult in countries where liquidity constraints and currency volatility affect how people store and move value.
Espinoza’s remarks also underline that the proposal is not simply about adoption—it is about building an enforcement-ready system. With Bolivia on the FATF grey list, authorities would need to demonstrate robust controls around compliance, monitoring, and AML requirements before any wider acceptance of stablecoins could become feasible.
Why stablecoins are gaining traction: the dollar squeeze
Bolivia’s stablecoin discussions come at a time when the country has been grappling with a prolonged shortage of US dollars, which are widely used alongside the boliviano. As Reuters reported, Bolivia held an official exchange rate—6.86 bolivianos per US dollar for purchases and 6.96 for sales—from 2011 until earlier this year, when pressure on foreign-exchange reserves forced the government to abandon the long-standing peg.
Once the peg ended, a parallel foreign exchange market expanded, and the dollar traded at a premium relative to the official rate. Reuters’ coverage links that growing gap to heightened demand for dollar-denominated alternatives. In this context, stablecoins such as USDT can appear attractive because they aim to maintain a consistent value relative to the US dollar.
That dynamic helps explain why USDT—already a dominant stablecoin globally—has become part of the policy conversation. While stablecoins do not eliminate exchange-rate and liquidity issues overnight, they can change the mechanics of payments by enabling transfers that are not directly constrained by local cash availability in the same way.
Bolivia’s policy shift after the 2024 crypto ban
The USDT payments idea also fits within Bolivia’s broader move toward regulated participation in digital assets. The country lifted its long-standing ban on cryptocurrencies in 2024, opening space for new rules and institutional integration. CriptoNoticias’ framing of the USDT proposal is consistent with a wider effort to bring crypto-related tools into the formal financial sector rather than leaving them to operate solely in the shadows.
The political direction appears to have accelerated further under President Rodrigo Paz Pereira. Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted that the administration, after he took office in late 2025, pledged to integrate digital assets into the formal financial system. That includes paving the way for banks to offer crypto-related products and services, potentially including stablecoin-based accounts.
USDT’s prominence is part of why it is likely to be considered first. CoinMarketCap data cited in the source notes that USDT’s market capitalization exceeds $184 billion, making it the largest stablecoin by size.
Market backdrop: adoption in Latin America and what to watch next
Bolivia is not acting in isolation. Chainalysis, in its 2025 evaluation of crypto adoption across Latin America, reported $14.8 billion in total transaction volume over a 12-month period. While that figure does not isolate Bolivia alone, it signals that stablecoin usage and broader crypto activity have found a meaningful foothold across the region.
What remains uncertain is whether Bolivia can translate its intent into implementable regulation quickly enough to affect day-to-day commerce—and whether the approach will gain institutional buy-in from banks and payment providers. The FATF grey-list constraint is a major variable: it implies that regulators must design a system that can withstand compliance scrutiny and demonstrate effective AML controls.
For users and investors, the immediate watch points are straightforward: the details of any proposed legal definition of USDT in Bolivia, the compliance obligations that would be required for institutions handling stablecoin flows, and whether pilots or limited rollouts precede any broader recognition. As Bolivia weighs stablecoin integration against its regulatory and financial constraints, the outcome could become a significant case study for how governments balance access to dollar liquidity with compliance expectations.
On Monday, several Senate Democrats announced that they’d hold a press conference this week to state their opposition to Clarity and what they said is its “failure to rein in President Donald Trump’s corrupt crypto schemes.” Senator Murphy will join senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley at that event on Capitol Hill, which will also highlight their claims that the crypto sector’s Washington influence is causing “growing political corruption.”
One of the lawmakers involved in the ethics discussions, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, recently noted that Trump’s largest single 2025 income stream, $636 million, came from issuing the memecoin that bore his name. She said that she and fellow Democrats have been pushing to make it illegal for presidents to issue or sponsor any digital assets.
“We cannot let self-dealing destroy an opportunity to strengthen consumer protections, crack down on illicit finance and expand economic opportunity for the millions of Americans our financial system has left behind,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “The time to act is now — and that must include ethics reforms that prohibit members of Congress, the president and their spouses from cashing in on their office.”
Though Clarity would need many Democrats to join with Republicans if advocates want to hit the necessary 60-vote threshold for Senate passage, Gillibrand and other Democrats have said that the bill can’t pass until this is addressed.
President Donald Trump pressed the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, warning that China could seize control of crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) if lawmakers fail to act.
The appeal arrives with the Senate back in session and a narrow window before the recess that begins August 8. Lawmakers have roughly four weeks, widely viewed as the bill’s last realistic chance this year. Yet, success odds on prediction market Polymarket have plummeted by almost 5% today.
Trump Frames the CLARITY Act as a China Race
Trump posted the appeal on Truth Social, linking it to the late Senator Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican, whom he called a supporter of the bill, died over the weekend.
“China, and many other countries, would like to take complete and total control of this major financial “happening,” as well as A.I., where we are now leading, but where they are fighting hard. Don’t let China win on either subject!!!” Trump articulated.
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The warning frames a wider contest between Washington and Beijing over digital assets and AI. CLARITY would build on the GENIUS Act, the first major US crypto law, signed last July.
The House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act 294-134 in July 2025, with dozens of Democrats joining. It later cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9.
The bill now needs 60 votes on the Senate floor, a threshold that has grown more politically expensive to reach.
Why 60 Votes Remain Out of Reach
The bill still faces unresolved fights, and ethics is the biggest. Democrats want guardrails on conflicts of interest tied to Trump’s crypto business.
Trump’s latest financial disclosure showed crypto as his biggest income source. It included more than $1 billion from his family’s ventures, led by over $500 million from World Liberty Financial.
The two committee Democrats who backed the bill said their support would not extend to the floor without a deal. Negotiators also disagree over developer liability protections for non-custodial software.
Graham’s death and Mitch McConnell’s absence since mid-June leave Republicans little margin. That raises the stakes for winning Democratic support.
Analysts Split on the Odds
Industry voices disagree on the outcome. Solana Policy Institute President Kristin Smith sees a real path, citing building momentum and the emerging bill text.
Still, Galaxy Digital Head of Research Alex Thorn is more cautious. His firm recently cut its passage odds to 50%, citing a shrinking calendar and competition for floor time.
Prediction market Polymarket mirrors that doubt. As of July 13, its traders put the odds of passage this year near 24%, down from above 70% earlier.
Custodia Escalates Its Fed Fight
Meanwhile, Wyoming crypto bank Custodia asked the Supreme Court to revive its fight with the Federal Reserve. The bank wants justices to review its denied master account.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City rejected that account in January 2023, citing its crypto focus. Founder Caitlin Long petitioned the court after lower courts backed the Fed.
Critics have long called the denial an example of Operation Choke Point 2.0.
The coming weeks will test whether Washington can deliver crypto’s biggest legislative prize before the calendar runs out.
The post Polymarket Odds Plummet Despite Trump Pushing CLARITY Act With Urgent China Warning appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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