Crypto World
Banks vs the CLARITY Act
The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14, 2026, but the biggest threat to its passage was never the crypto skeptics or the SEC holdouts. It was the American Bankers Association. The ABA spent April and May running an emergency lobbying campaign to close what it calls the “stablecoin yield loophole” in the bill, a provision that lets crypto exchanges pay activity-based rewards on stablecoin balances. The ABA’s own research estimates that yield-bearing stablecoins could grow the market from $300 billion to $2 trillion at the direct expense of bank deposits, reducing lending capacity by 20 percent or more. The fight is not about consumer protection or financial stability. It is about banks defending a profit model built on zero-yield checking accounts against a structurally superior alternative. This is the political fight nobody is properly explaining.
Summary
- The CLARITY Act’s stablecoin rewards provision has become the main flashpoint between the crypto industry and U.S. banking groups over fears of deposit migration from traditional banks.
- The American Bankers Association warned that yield-bearing stablecoins could expand the market to $2 trillion and reduce lending capacity across consumer, small business, and agricultural sectors.
- Crypto industry advocates argued that banks are defending low-yield deposit models as exchanges push for activity-based stablecoin rewards under the proposed legislation.
What the loophole actually is
The CLARITY Act, in its current form, contains a provision that has become the most contested single fight in crypto legislation in 2026. Most coverage refers to it vaguely as “stablecoin yield provisions” without explaining what is actually at stake. The specifics matter.
The 2025 GENIUS Act, which established federal stablecoin regulation, prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield on payment stablecoins. The ban applies to the issuer (Circle for USDC, Tether for USDT, Ripple for RLUSD, Paxos for various tokens). The intent was to keep stablecoins working as payment instruments rather than competing with bank deposits.
The CLARITY Act contains language that, as currently drafted, lets crypto exchanges and digital asset service providers offer rewards on stablecoin balances held with them, even though the underlying issuer cannot pay yield directly. The Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise language, released in early May, refined the original draft. The compromise prohibits rewards that are “economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit.” But it allows rewards tied to “activity-based” participation in exchange membership programs, including rewards calculated by reference to balance, duration, and tenure.
That last clause is the loophole the banking industry is fighting. From the ABA’s perspective, an exchange offering a 4 percent reward on USDC balances held in a membership program is functionally identical to a bank paying 4 percent interest on a checking account. The fact that the reward is technically tied to “activity” rather than balance does not change the economic reality for the consumer. The depositor sees yield. The depositor moves money. The bank loses the deposit.
The banking industry is correct this is a loophole in the original GENIUS Act framework. Whether it should be closed is the political fight that has dragged CLARITY’s path through the Senate Banking Committee.
The deposit flight argument
The American Bankers Association’s central argument against the CLARITY language is the threat of deposit flight, and the numbers the ABA cites are striking enough to deserve serious examination.
On April 13, 2026, the ABA published its own commissioned study estimating that yield-bearing stablecoins could grow the global stablecoin market from approximately $300 billion today to $2 trillion within several years. The growth, the ABA argues, would come largely at the direct expense of traditional bank deposits, particularly checking accounts and money market accounts that currently pay little or no interest.
A coalition of banking trade groups, including the ABA, Bank Policy Institute, Independent Community Bankers of America, Consumer Bankers Association, and Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, wrote to Senate Banking Committee leaders in early May, warning that “research indicates deposit flight driven by the widespread adoption of yield-bearing stablecoins could reduce consumer, small-business, and agricultural lending by one-fifth or more.”
This is the headline number that gets cited in coverage. A 20 percent reduction in lending capacity would be a material macroeconomic event. Banks fund commercial loans, mortgages, small business credit, and agricultural lending substantially from deposit bases. If deposits flee to yield-bearing stablecoins, the funding capacity for those loans shrinks proportionally. The banks’ argument is that this is not a marginal concern. It is a structural threat to the way credit flows through the US economy.
The argument has surface plausibility. The FDIC’s own analysis of the 2023 spring bank failures (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic) found depositors with substantial uninsured funds were far more likely to run during stress events than insured retail depositors. The pattern suggests deposit stability is more fragile than banks publicly admit, particularly for uninsured balances and sophisticated depositors who actively manage cash positions.
What the deposit flight argument leaves out is the most important context. American checking accounts currently pay close to nothing. The national average interest rate on checking accounts is approximately 0.07 percent. On savings accounts, the average is approximately 0.43 percent. Both numbers have stayed near zero through the entire post-2008 era of low interest rates and have not risen materially even as the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate to over 5 percent in 2024.
The gap between what banks pay depositors and what banks earn on those same deposits has been one of the most profitable elements of the banking business for over a decade. Banks take in deposits at near-zero cost, lend them out at much higher rates, and capture the spread. The arrangement works for banks precisely because depositors have had no comparable alternative.
Yield-bearing stablecoins backed by US Treasuries can offer 3 to 5 percent returns to holders, depending on the underlying yield environment. The math is not subtle. A depositor with $10,000 in a zero-yield checking account is giving up roughly $400 per year in potential interest income. A depositor with $100,000 across various bank accounts is giving up roughly $4,000. The choice between zero yield in a bank account and 4 percent yield in a tokenized money market alternative is not a choice most rational consumers would make in favor of the bank, if the alternative existed at scale.
This is what the ABA’s deposit flight argument actually means in plain English. Banks are afraid the loophole will let consumers earn what their deposits should arguably have been earning all along. The “deposit flight” the ABA is warning about is, in part, consumers rationally responding to a better product.
What the banks are actually defending
The honest framing of the banking industry’s position requires understanding what banks are actually trying to protect.
The first thing banks are protecting is the zero-yield checking account business model. American banks currently hold approximately $17 trillion in customer deposits. A substantial portion of those deposits are in non-interest-bearing checking accounts or low-interest savings accounts. The interest rate banks pay on these deposits has been compressed near zero for over a decade. The income banks generate from lending these deposits at market rates is, in turn, one of the most reliable profit streams in the industry.
If stablecoins offering 4 to 5 percent yield became widely available and easy to access, the economic logic for keeping money in zero-yield bank accounts would weaken substantially. Banks would face a choice: raise deposit rates to compete (which would compress their net interest margins and reduce profitability), or lose deposits to stablecoin alternatives (which would force them to seek more expensive funding sources or reduce lending).
The second thing banks are protecting is the regulatory moat. Banks run under extensive regulatory requirements (capital adequacy, liquidity coverage, FDIC insurance assessments, Community Reinvestment Act obligations, Bank Secrecy Act compliance) stablecoin issuers do not face in the same form. The CLARITY Act would let stablecoin-related products compete with bank deposits without imposing equivalent regulatory burdens on the stablecoin side. Banks argue this creates an unlevel playing field. The argument has merit.
The third thing banks are protecting is the structural role of banks in credit creation. Under the current US banking system, deposits at commercial banks are the primary funding source for consumer and commercial lending. If deposits migrate to stablecoins, the funding model has to adjust. Banks would need to raise capital through wholesale funding (more expensive and less stable), or the lending capacity of the system would shrink, or some combination of both. The ABA’s argument this could reduce lending by 20 percent or more is contested but not implausible.
The fourth thing banks are protecting is their political position. Banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United States, and the banking industry has spent decades building relationships with Congress, regulators, and the Federal Reserve. The political infrastructure banks have built gives them significant influence over financial legislation. Allowing stablecoins to compete with deposits would, over time, shift some of that political power to a new industry (the crypto industry) banks have historically opposed. Banks are not just defending their economic interests. They are defending the political ecosystem that protects those interests.
None of this is necessarily improper. Industries lobby for their interests. Banks have legitimate concerns about deposit funding, regulatory parity, and systemic stability. The argument is not that the banking industry’s position is illegitimate. The argument is the banking industry’s position is being framed as consumer protection and financial stability when it is, more straightforwardly, a defense of the existing profit model against a competitive threat.
The crypto industry’s response
The crypto industry’s pushback against the ABA campaign has been unusually pointed for what is typically a politically careful sector.
Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, responded directly to the ABA’s lobbying campaign in early May. His argument was that banks have already had their preferred outcome in the GENIUS Act, which banned yield payments by stablecoin issuers themselves. Banks won “idle yield killed,” in Grewal’s framing, which was already a loss for consumers but a clear win for banks. The CLARITY Act compromise on activity-based rewards represents a further concession to banking industry concerns, and Grewal’s view is that the banks should “take yes for an answer.”
Cody Carbone, Chief Policy Officer at The Digital Chamber, was sharper. He criticized the banking industry for “waiting until the final days before the markup to raise objections.” The framing was that the banks had multiple opportunities to negotiate the language during the months of bipartisan negotiations and chose to wait until the eleventh hour to mount an emergency campaign. “The arrogance is astounding,” Carbone wrote in a public post.
The crypto industry’s substantive argument against the ABA is twofold. First, the deposit flight concern is overstated because banks can easily mitigate the issue by raising deposit rates to competitive levels. If banks paid 3 percent interest on checking accounts, the relative attractiveness of yield-bearing stablecoins would diminish considerably. The fact banks have chosen not to raise rates, even as the federal funds rate has stayed elevated for years, is a strategic choice rather than an unavoidable constraint.
Second, the lending capacity argument assumes banks are the only legitimate source of credit creation in the US economy. The reality is non-bank lending has grown substantially over the past decade. Private credit funds, fintech lenders, peer-to-peer platforms, and now potentially stablecoin-funded lending platforms all extend credit outside the traditional banking system. The deposit flight argument treats banks as irreplaceable. The economic reality is capital flows to where it can be deployed productively, and the structural role of banks has been gradually eroding for years.
The White House has taken a position broadly aligned with the crypto industry on this specific question. Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets, publicly criticized the ABA’s late-stage lobbying effort, noting the bankers had been invited to the White House in February to discuss the compromise language and had not made themselves available at that time. The administration’s view is the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise language is final, and the ABA’s continued lobbying is an attempt to relitigate a settled question.
Why the compromise still leaves space the banks oppose
The Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise language is the result of months of negotiation between crypto industry advocates and banking industry concerns. The language has been narrowed several times in response to bank lobbying. The current draft is, by ABA’s own admission, improved from earlier versions. But the banks are still fighting because the compromise still permits the specific mechanism that worries them most.
Under the current language, stablecoin issuers cannot pay yield directly. That part is unchanged from the GENIUS Act. Exchanges and crypto intermediaries cannot pay rewards “in a manner that is economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit.” This is the new restriction the compromise added.
But the language permits exchanges to pay rewards for “user participation in an exchange’s membership program,” with rewards potentially calculated by reference to duration, balance, and tenure. This is the loophole the banks want closed.
In practice, this means a crypto exchange could offer a membership program with tiered benefits. Higher membership tiers receive rewards based on the user’s overall engagement with the platform, including their stablecoin holdings. The rewards could be calculated as a percentage of the user’s average stablecoin balance over a given period, denominated in stablecoins or other tokens. The structure would be technically distinct from interest payments on a bank deposit, but the economic effect for the user would be similar.
The banking industry’s position is this structure is a designed workaround. The ABA’s letter to senators called the activity-based rewards provision “a significant loophole” that would let exchanges offer “interest-like incentives” through marginally different legal structures. If the goal of the GENIUS Act ban was to prevent stablecoins from competing with bank deposits, the ABA argues, the CLARITY language undermines that goal by allowing the same competition through a different mechanism.
The crypto industry’s position is activity-based rewards are not the same as yield payments and serve legitimate user engagement purposes exchanges should be allowed to design. The compromise language, on this view, is the correct balance: it bans the most direct form of stablecoin yield while preserving exchanges’ ability to compete on user experience.
The actual answer probably lies between the two positions. The activity-based rewards mechanism is, in practice, a partial substitute for direct yield. Whether it is enough of a substitute to trigger the deposit flight banks are warning about is an empirical question nobody can answer with certainty in advance. The compromise language is a bet that the answer is “no, or not by enough to cause systemic concern.” The banks’ continued lobbying is a bet that the answer is “yes, eventually, and the cost will be too high to undo.”
What this fight tells you about CLARITY’s real politics
The stablecoin yield fight reveals something about CLARITY’s broader political dynamics that most coverage misses.
The bill is being treated as a crypto industry victory in many headlines. The reality is that CLARITY is the product of extensive compromises with multiple stakeholder groups, each of which had to be partially accommodated for the bill to advance. The banking industry got the GENIUS Act ban on direct stablecoin yield. The crypto industry got the activity-based rewards carve-out. The progressive Democrats got partial ethics provisions that have not yet been finalized. The administration got the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act language. The CFTC got expanded jurisdiction over digital commodities. The SEC retained jurisdiction over digital securities.
The bill that emerged from this process is a negotiated settlement among multiple powerful interest groups, not a clean crypto industry win. The banks were not the only stakeholders who had to compromise. The crypto industry made substantial concessions, too. The bill that exists is the bill that could be negotiated, not the bill that any single party wanted.
This is normal for major financial legislation. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 was a similar product of multi-stakeholder compromise. The Bank Secrecy Act amendments over the years have been similarly negotiated. The legislative process is, in many ways, a process of finding the minimum acceptable set of concessions that lets a bill move forward.
What is unusual about CLARITY is that the banking industry is openly trying to extract additional concessions during the floor vote stage, after the committee process has completed. This is a high-risk strategy for the banks. If they push too hard and Democrats walk away from the bipartisan compromise, CLARITY could stall on the Senate floor. If they push successfully and the language is further restricted, crypto industry support could weaken, and Republican senators could face pressure from their own constituents to vote against a bill that no longer accomplishes what was promised.
The banks are betting they have enough political leverage to extract further concessions without killing the bill. The crypto industry is betting the banks have already overplayed their hand. Both bets cannot be right.
The realistic outcome
Based on the current political dynamics, several outcomes are plausible for the stablecoin yield provisions in the final CLARITY Act.
The first possibility is that the compromise language survives substantially unchanged. The Tillis-Alsobrooks framework was the product of months of negotiation. Both senators have indicated they consider the language final. If the Senate floor vote happens in June or July 2026, as the White House targets, the compromise language could move through with only minor technical refinements. This is the outcome the crypto industry wants, and the banks are trying to prevent.
The second possibility is that the language gets tightened during floor amendments. Democrats negotiating for the bipartisan votes needed to overcome a filibuster could demand additional restrictions on activity-based rewards in exchange for their support. The ABA’s lobbying campaign is designed to create this dynamic. If banks can convince Democrats that the loophole is too large, the floor amendment process could narrow the rewards mechanism further.
The third possibility is that the language gets removed entirely during conference reconciliation with the House version. The House passed its version of crypto market structure legislation in 2024 (FIT21), and the final CLARITY Act will need to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions. The conference committee process is opaque and often produces unexpected outcomes. The stablecoin yield provisions could be substantially modified during reconciliation.
The fourth possibility is that CLARITY stalls or fails entirely. If the stablecoin yield fight becomes too contentious, or if the broader ethics provisions and law enforcement issues cannot be resolved, the bill could miss its July 4 White House signing target and slip past the 2026 midterm elections. Senator Cynthia Lummis warned that failure to clear the committee before Memorial Day could push the next viable legislative window past November 2026. The bill cleared the committee on May 14, but the broader timeline pressure is real.
The fifth possibility, which gets less attention, is that the law passes substantially as drafted, but the agency-level rulemaking process narrows the rewards mechanism in implementation. CLARITY would direct the SEC and CFTC to develop joint rules on stablecoin-related products. The rulemaking process, which stretches into 2027 and 2028, would let regulators apply more restrictive interpretations than the statutory language strictly requires. This is the outcome banks may quietly prefer if they cannot win during the legislative phase.
What this tells you about banks and crypto going forward
The CLARITY Act stablecoin yield fight is, in many ways, a preview of the larger battle between banks and crypto that will play out over the rest of the decade.
The fundamental dynamic is that crypto-native infrastructure (stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, on-chain settlement) can offer customers economic terms that traditional banks cannot match while protecting their existing profit models. The crypto industry’s competitive advantage is not the underlying technology. It is the lack of legacy infrastructure costs and regulatory overhead that lets crypto firms pass through more value to end users.
For banks, the existential question is whether they can adapt their business models to compete with crypto-native alternatives or whether they need to keep regulatory moats that prevent direct competition. The CLARITY Act fight is one specific instance of this larger question. Future fights over central bank digital currencies, tokenized deposits, programmable money, and DeFi lending will all touch on the same fundamental issue.
The banking industry’s preferred strategy, visible in the ABA’s CLARITY campaign, is to use regulatory and political channels to constrain crypto competition rather than adapt to it. This strategy has worked historically. Banks have successfully constrained money market funds, peer-to-peer lending, and other deposit substitutes through regulatory and political pressure for decades. The question is whether the strategy keeps working as crypto becomes more established and politically powerful.
The crypto industry’s preferred strategy is to win the legislative fights that establish clear rules for digital assets and then compete on the merits in the resulting regulated market. The CLARITY Act, in its current form, would give crypto firms a clearer legal framework than they have ever operated under in the United States. If the bill passes substantially as drafted, the crypto industry would have a structural opportunity to compete with banks on more level terms than has ever existed before.
Whether the banks succeed in narrowing the CLARITY language further, or whether the crypto industry holds the line on the compromise, will be determined over the next two to three months. The vote count on the Senate floor will be the proximate indicator. The ABA’s lobbying intensity in the coming weeks will be the leading signal.
For readers tracking the fight, three things are worth watching. First, whether Senator Tillis or Senator Alsobrooks shows any signs of reopening the compromise language under pressure from banking constituents. Second, whether the ABA’s deposit flight studies gain traction with moderate Democrats who could shift the floor vote dynamics. Third, whether crypto industry advocacy groups (Blockchain Association, Digital Chamber, Coinbase’s policy team) successfully counter-mobilize their own grassroots networks in the way the banking industry has done.
The bottom line
The CLARITY Act is on a path to becoming law in 2026, but the path is narrower than the headlines suggest. The single biggest obstacle is not the SEC, the CFTC, the Democrats opposing the bill on ethics grounds, or the libertarian objections to government oversight of crypto. It is the American Bankers Association and the broader banking industry coalition fighting to close the stablecoin yield loophole the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise created.
The fight is not about consumer protection or financial stability, despite how the ABA frames it. It is about banks defending a profit model built on zero-yield deposits against a structurally superior alternative. The deposit flight scenario the banks warn about is, in part, consumers rationally responding to a better product. The lending capacity reduction is a real concern, but the underlying issue is whether banks should be the only legitimate channel for credit creation in the US economy, which is a contestable proposition.
The CLARITY Act, in its current form, represents a negotiated compromise that gives banks substantial concessions (the GENIUS Act ban on direct stablecoin yield) while preserving some space for stablecoin-related products to compete (the activity-based rewards mechanism). The compromise is not perfect from either industry’s perspective. It is, by the standards of major financial legislation, a reasonable balance.
What happens next will be determined by which side overplays its hand. If the banks push for further restrictions and Democrats walk away from the bipartisan compromise, CLARITY could stall on the Senate floor and miss its 2026 window entirely. If the crypto industry holds the line and the bill passes substantially as drafted, banks will face a structural competitive threat they have not faced in decades.
Both outcomes are plausible. Neither is guaranteed.
For crypto.news readers, the practical lesson is to watch the floor vote dynamics, the conference reconciliation process, and the agency rulemaking that will follow passage. The legislative outcome will set the framework. The administrative implementation will determine how much of that framework actually works in practice. Both phases will be shaped by ongoing pressure from the banking industry that is unlikely to stop just because the bill becomes law.
The banks are not trying to kill CLARITY because they oppose crypto regulation. They are trying to kill the specific version of CLARITY that lets stablecoins compete with bank deposits on terms banks cannot match without raising their own deposit rates. The fight is, in its essentials, about who gets to capture the spread between zero-yield deposits and Treasury-backed yields.
The answer to that question will shape American banking for the next decade.
This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. Legislative outcomes and policy debates evolve quickly; the analysis described reflects reporting available as of late May 2026. Always do your own research and consult appropriate counsel for specific regulatory matters.
This Friday, we examine Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid in greater detail.
Ethereum (ETH)
This week, Ethereum is up 2%, but that is hardly relevant given that the price has failed to reclaim the $1,800 resistance. Sellers returned there to keep the price locked in under this key level.
With the uptrend halted, this cryptocurrency is forced to range between support at $1,500 and resistance at $1,800.
Looking ahead, because sellers appear to control price action, they’re likely to make another attempt to break the key support. If ETH shows weakness and loses $1,500, then new yearly lows will materialize with key targets at $1,400 and $1,100.
Ripple (XRP)
XRP closed the week in red with a modest 1% loss. While that is not much, the more concerning aspect is that the price was rejected at the $1.3 resistance, and since then it’s only been down.
If nothing changes, then this cryptocurrency is on a clear path to revisit the support at $1 where buyers showed up a few weeks ago. The question is if they will return there again or shy away.
Looking ahead, the XRP chart shows weakness with buyers absent. This has encouraged sellers to step up, and they are dominating right now. This could change once the price hits $1, but this is still uncertain now.
Cardano (ADA)
Cardano fell by 4% this week, and after losing support at $0.24, its market cap dropped significantly. This caused it to lose several places on the list of the biggest coins by market cap, where it now ranks 16th, behind the likes of Stellar and Monero.
The price found short-term relief at the $0.15 support, but this appears to have ended as of this post. Now, sellers are back, and they may soon test this key support again with the aim of breaking it and pushing ADA even lower.
Looking ahead, if bears are successful in the coming days, the price could quickly fall again to hit new lows around $0.10, where the next major support level is located. This would be quite unfortunate and prolong the existing downtrend that started in 2025.
Binance Coin (BNB)
After a long battle and consolidation, it appears BNB is finally falling below its support at $580. Because of this, it also closes the week 5% lower. If nothing changes and buyers don’t return, then $580 will turn into resistance, with lower lows likely.
The next key support is found at $500, and this level is likely to be tested if this bearish momentum persists. Since sellers appear to be dominating across the market, a reversal here appears unlikely.
Looking ahead, Binance Coin’s pause between $580 and $690 is about to end. This flat consolidation lasted for six months and a breakdown is a significant bearish signal. Expect new lows this year if bulls cannot regain control.
Hype (HYPE)
Surprisingly, HYPE closed the week 16% higher after a strong performance by buyers, briefly pushing it to $76. However, since then, the price entered a pullback which could see it return to the support at $63.
While the overall momentum remains bullish, the current price pattern may indicate a double top around $76. To confirm this, the price will need to make a lower low under $52 later on.
Looking ahead, buyers and sellers are actively competing to control the price. Right now, the ball is changing hands every few days. While buyers still appear to have the advantage, this remains fragile at the time of this post.
The post Crypto Price Analysis June 19: ETH, XRP, ADA, BNB, and HYPE appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The XRP community’s reaction to the Ripple Swell 2026 announcement was immediate and hostile. Retail holders flooded the @RippleSwell reply thread within hours of the announcement. The consistent theme was not excitement about 1,500 attendees or a merged XRPL Apex agenda; it was anger that Ripple’s flagship institutional event appears to be building a case for RLUSD while XRP falls.
The frustration has a specific target as Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin is taking up conference oxygen that long-term holders believe should belong to XRP. Community members used language that ranged from sharp to outright furious. The community is even calling Ripple’s leadership out by name, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
The underlying accusation is not subtle. Ripple is constructing a regulated institutional business around RLUSD while XRP’s price stagnates and holders are disappointed.
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Swell 2026 Scope: What’s Ripple Actually Doing
Swell 2026 is scheduled for October 27–29 at The Shed in Hudson Yards, New York City, and represents the first time Ripple is folding its developer-focused XRPL Apex summit into the main Swell conference. The combined event is targeting 1,500-plus attendees, 75-plus speakers, and 50-plus sessions across three programmatic stages covering finance, blockchain infrastructure, and digital assets.
Ripple’s stated agenda themes include payments, tokenization, decentralized finance, AI applications, interoperability, and stablecoins. RLUSD’s role in enterprise treasury management and cross-border settlement is a prominent feature of the institutional track.
The XRP Ledger’s milestone of surpassing 4 billion completed transactions is being cited by Garlinghouse as evidence that the network has matured enough for the institutional audience Ripple is targeting.
Garlinghouse framed the moment with deliberate confidence:
“I’ve been in crypto long enough to know when a moment is real”
The statement positions Swell 2026 as a threshold event for institutional crypto adoption, which is accurate as a description of Ripple’s ambition, but says nothing specific about what that adoption means for XRP price or holder value.
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XRP Holders Are Not Hiding Their Frustration
The community sentiment is not a fringe reaction. Retail XRP holders expressed a clear and recurring grievance. Ripple is allocating conference prominence to RLUSD and institutional partnerships while XRP’s price continues to underperform relative to the company’s corporate milestones.
The tone in several replies was openly hostile toward Garlinghouse and the Ripple leadership team, with holders describing themselves as investors who have been systematically sidelined.
The token burn argument has re-emerged as a focal point. A portion of the XRP community is pushing for supply reduction as a mechanism to create direct price pressure, a demand that Ripple has consistently declined to act on.
That refusal, combined with a conference agenda that leads with stablecoins and tokenization rather than XRP utility, is being read by holders as a signal about where Ripple’s actual priorities sit.
Community sentiment of this intensity is a legitimate market signal. When the XRP community, historically one of the most vocal and coordinated retail bases in crypto, publicly turns on a Ripple event, it registers in social volume metrics that can suppress short-term buying pressure and amplify sell-side momentum.
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The post Ripple Swell 2026 Sparks Holder Backlash Over RLUSD Priority appeared first on Cryptonews.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose above $63,000 on Friday as markets adjusted to geopolitical and macro changes.
Key points:
- Bitcoin takes a time-out near week-to-date lows after a broadly hawkish Fed interest-rate meeting.
- US-Iran tensions slowly resurface with the Strait of Hormuz oil route in the firing line.
- A trader suggests that a “black swan” event could still come in this Bitcoin bear market.
BTC price lack upside momentum after hawkish Fed cues
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD locked in a tight trading range on low time frames after dropping to eight-day lows.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Weakness had entered after the US Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate decision, which sparked a broader risk-asset comedown.
Wednesday’s meeting on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) was the first for new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, who avoided giving traders dovish signals on future policy.
“Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2 percent goal, in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy,” he said in a statement after a unanimous board decision to keep rates at current levels.
“The Committee will deliver price stability.”
Warsh’s tone was unusual, as expectations had seen him being accommodating to US President Donald Trump’s insistence on rate cuts. He also cut the FOMC statement length considerably, using drier language than former chair, Jerome Powell.
“We will have far less information going forward,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reacted in a post on X, noting that Warsh had also “dropped” its forward guidance.
“He even hinted that the ‘dot plot’ could be changed or eliminated along with all forms of Fed communication, such as the policy statement and press conferences. In other words, the market will now have less Fed outlook which means more uncertainty.”
Fed target rate probabilities for July 29 FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed markets pricing in a near 40% chance of a rate hike at the next FOMC meeting in late July.
Bitcoin “black swan” back on the radar
With US markets closed for the Juneteenth holiday, meanwhile, Bitcoin and crypto were alone in digesting the latest developments in the US-Iran war.
Related: Bitcoin tipped for Q3 ‘macro bottom’ near $50K as major liquidity grab looms
Despite signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU), the two sides appeared far from aligned on the future road map, with Iran once more eyeing the newly reopened Strait of Hormuz oil route.
Citing Bloomberg, Kobeissi reported that traffic “cannot cross the Strait of Hormuz without its permission.”
“The MoU signed with the US only says that transit through the Strait of Hormuz would be free for the duration of its 60 day term,” it explained on Friday.
“It appears Iran is preparing for long-term control of Hormuz.”
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
WTI crude oil continued to circle $75 per barrel on the day after hitting its lowest levels since early March.
Amid the lull in risk-asset volatility, trader and analyst Rekt Capital hinted that Bitcoin bulls’ true test is yet to come.
“There tends to be a Black Swan event in the second half of Bitcoin Bear Markets. Lesson there,” he told X followers.
Chris Larsen, the Ripple co-founder and apparent privacy champion who wired San Francisco with thousands of police cameras, has appeared on a leaked guest list for Dialog, surveillance mogul Peter Thiel’s invitation-only network.
Investigative journalist Dave Troy published previously unreported names yesterday.
He tagged Larsen as both a participant and a founding fellow of the organization, which has been described as “Bilderberg (an off-the-record gathering of political and business elite) meets Silicon Valley salon.”
Dialog, meanwhile, positions itself as a hush-hush place where leaders from various fields and ideological backgrounds can come together and build relationships.
As part of this, it runs annual in-person retreats featuring highly secretive sessions, which have included “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Navigating WWIII,” and “How’s Your Sex Life?”
Larsen, who branded himself a privacy champion, co-founded the coalition Californians for Privacy Now, served on the board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and made his fortune from the cryptographically secure XRP Ledger, now appears on a roster at the highest echelons of the surveillance state.
His name wasn’t generally associated with surveillance until his police camera initiative, the Real-Time Investigation Center that operated out of the same building as Ripple’s former headquarters in San Francisco.
In stark contrast, Thiel is one of the most recognizable leaders in the surveillance state.
He co-founded the citizen monitoring giant Palantir and invested in face-scanner Clearview AI, license plate reader Flock Safety, and movement monitor SafeGraph.
Chris Larsen, the privacy advocate who surveilled a city
Larsen tried to make a name for himself as a consumer advocate. In addition to the two privacy-focused organizations listed above, he co-founded E-Loan, the first company to advocate for consumer access to FICO credit scores.
He then built the democratized lending marketplace Prosper, before co-founding Ripple.
Bloomberg estimates his net worth above $12 billion, most of it tied to Ripple stock and XRP tokens.
His privacy branding has aged somewhat poorly, however. He now appears on a list of Dialog participants, founded in 2006 by Thiel and data broker Auren Hoffman whose movement monitoring company SafeGraph tracks phone location data.
The Dialog roster only became public this week. Swiss hacktivist Maia Arson Crimew found an internal directory inside the group’s website code. Wired verified the leak.
The new records have exposed an upcoming 222-person retreat near Dublin, originally scheduled for August. Internal documents describe over 1,000 paying members to Dialog overall, and Wired reported that leaders might grade attendees on a hidden scale by wealth and fame.
Of course, if anyone were curious about Larsen’s ties to the surveillance state, Thiel’s relationship with Ripple actually predates Larsen’s participation in Dialog.
Indeed, Thiel’s Founders Fund was an early investor in OpenCoin, the startup that became Larsen’s Ripple. Therefore, it was public knowledge that surveillance leader Thiel and Larsen were on the same cap table long before this week’s Dialog leak.
Peter Thiel’s secret society or just a ‘convening’?
There’s disagreement about whether Dialog is a particularly secret society.
Troy, who revealed the names, cautioned that Dialog is “more of a convening than secret society,” and noted that many participants claimed to have never met Thiel.
Moreover, the leaked file “looks like a list of attendees for the upcoming [meeting] and not ‘members’ per se,” he clarified.
As an additional indication that Dialog isn’t particularly secretive, another member of Ripple’s leadership has publicly acknowledged it.
Specifically, Brad Garlinghouse said in 2021, “You know, I attended a conference hosted by a gentleman named Auren Hoffman and Peter Thiel called Dialog.”
Elsewhere in that interview, Garlinghouse admitted that Dialog was his first exposure to the Bitcoin network.
Read more: Ripple’s Chris Larsen to fund police surveillance, drones in San Francisco
Larsen once personally bankrolled the largest private surveillance buildout in San Francisco’s history.
New York Magazine counted roughly 2,700 cameras, 93 police drones, and a $9.4 million Real-Time Investigation Center that shared a location with Ripple’s former headquarters.
At the time, Larsen insisted that the system was tightly restricted. “The police can’t monitor it live,” he told ABC7 in 2020. “That’s actually against the law in San Francisco.”
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Binance’s faltering European Union Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) license application in Greece has raised questions about whether the bloc’s central bank may have played an informal role in the process, despite not having formal authority over licensing decisions.
Even though MiCA assigns approval of crypto-asset service provider (CASP) licenses to national competent authorities (NCAs), lawyers told Cointelegraph that its wording does not prevent other EU institutions, including the European Central Bank (ECB), from communicating with those regulators during the review process.
“Nothing in the MiCA framework would prevent a third party like the ECB from offering its opinion to that national authority on Binance’s application,” David Lesperance, founder at Lesperance & Associates, told Cointelegraph.
The Big Whale reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that ECB President Christine Lagarde had signaled to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that Binance was not welcome in Europe. The report followed a Reuters story on Tuesday that Greece’s market regulator was set to reject Binance’s MiCA application.
The reports surfaced less than two weeks before the end of MiCA’s transitional period on July 1, a deadline that will determine which crypto firms can continue operating across the EU under its licensing regime.
Who actually decides under MiCA?
Under MiCA, CASP licenses are granted by national regulators, not by EU-level institutions like the ECB. In Binance’s case in Greece, that authority sits with the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC). The exchange said in January that it had applied for a MiCA license in Greece.
“Our understanding is that the HCMC completed its review of the application and considered it compliant with MiCA requirements. Our understanding is also that the application was subject to review at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) level,” Binance wrote in a blog post following the Reuters report.
A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company believed ESMA intended to advance the application and authorize it at an upcoming board meeting. The company did not respond to an additional request for clarification. The ESMA does not itself authorize CASP licenses under MiCA.
Yuriy Brisov, a lawyer at Digital & Analogue Partners, said the HCMC hasn’t published a decision on Binance’s application.
Related: BitGo courts crypto firms awaiting MiCA approval amid Binance licensing concerns
Brisov said MiCA “contains nothing that stops the ECB from talking to, advising, or sharing concerns” with a national regulator. However, he noted that ECB involvement is explicitly defined only in certain parts of MiCA, particularly rules governing stablecoin issuers, not CASP licenses such as exchanges like Binance.
Source: EUR-Lex
“That’s a concern that MiCA parks in the stablecoin chapter, not in the exchange-license one,” Brisov added.
Stablecoins raise the political stakes
The ECB has consistently voiced concerns about privately issued stablecoins, favoring tokenized financial infrastructure anchored by central bank money instead. According to The Big Whale, Lagarde’s reported intervention was tied to stablecoins.
Lagarde has argued that Europe should prioritize regulated settlement systems rather than rely on private stablecoins, while ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel has warned that stablecoins could even reinforce US dollar dominance.
At the same time, market data underscores Binance’s position as the world’s largest stablecoin exchange and the dominant hub for stablecoin liquidity.
Source: Binance
According to CryptoQuant data reported in February, Binance held approximately $47.5 billion in USDT and USDC combined, representing about 65% of total stablecoin reserves across centralized exchanges. That figure was up from roughly $35.9 billion a year earlier.
Related: AllUnity debuts SEKAU, a fully reserved Swedish krona stablecoin
The Big Whale also reported that France could be Binance’s remaining route, though no formal French application had been filed.
ESMA and HCMC did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s requests for comment. The ECB and French regulator Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) declined to comment.
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Crypto World
Where Could BTC Bottom After Breaking Below Key Ascending Channel? (Bitcoin Price Analysis)
Bitcoin is still under heavy selling pressure after breaking below a significant rising channel that had been guiding the price action since February, and there seems to be little stopping the asset from dropping lower.
The latest rejection from a short-term resistance has accelerated downside momentum once again and is pushing BTC back toward the key demand zone around $60K. Meanwhile, on-chain data suggest that long-term holders are realizing losses, reflecting a notable shift in market dynamics.
Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart
On the daily timeframe, Bitcoin has decisively broken below the large ascending channel that contained the price action for nearly four months. The breakdown occurred after BTC failed to reclaim the confluence of the 200-day moving average and the $80k zone and was rejected decisively to the downside.
The 100-day moving average located near the $72k area has now formed a key resistance zone. The market attempted to retest it following the initial breakdown, but sellers quickly regained control and triggered another leg lower before the market even reached the area, as the price failed to break back above the $67k short-term supply zone. The rejection confirms that bears remain in control of the broader trend for now.
The asset is currently trading around $63k and is hovering just above a major support area at $60k. This key demand zone marks the most important level on the chart, as it previously acted as a launchpad for the February recovery following the sharp capitulation move.
As long as BTC remains below the broken channel and beneath the moving averages, rallies are likely to be viewed as corrective. Moreover, should the $60k support region fail to hold, the next significant downside target appears to be the large demand area around $50k-$52k. Conversely, reclaiming the $72k resistance zone would be required to invalidate the current bearish outlook and potentially reopen the path toward the $80k region.
BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart
The 4-hour timeframe provides a clearer view of the recent breakdown. Following the breakdown from the $72k-$74k block, BTC experienced an aggressive sell-off that drove the price into the $60k support zone. The subsequent rebound formed a short-term rising channel, which is often considered a bearish continuation pattern when it develops after a strong decline.
The price has recently broken below the lower boundary of the channel, confirming the bearish pattern and increasing the probability of another test of the $60k-$61k support area. The failed breakout attempt at $67k highlights the lack of bullish conviction. In addition, the RSI has rolled over from near-overbought conditions and is now trending lower near the oversold region, suggesting weakening short-term momentum.
If sellers maintain control, the immediate focus remains on the $60k support zone. A decisive breakdown could trigger another wave of liquidations and accelerate the move toward higher time-frame liquidity pockets beneath the recent lows.
On the upside, BTC would need to recover the $67k resistance region before any meaningful bullish scenario can be considered. Above that, the next major barrier remains the $72k zone, which aligns with the broken daily support and moving-average cluster.
On-Chain Analysis
The Long-Term Holder SOPR (Spent Output Profit Ratio) continues to trend sharply lower and is now below the critical 1.0 threshold. This metric measures whether long-term holders are spending coins at a profit or a loss. Values above 1 indicate profitable spending, while readings near or below 1 suggest holders are either realizing minimal profits or refusing to distribute their coins.
The persistent decline in the 30-day EMA of the Long-Term Holder SOPR reflects a substantial reduction in profit-taking activity among experienced market participants. Historically, such conditions often emerge during prolonged corrections, as investors become less willing to sell after a significant drawdown.
The metric has recently reached capitulation territory, and its continued deterioration confirms the weakening market environment visible on the price charts. If SOPR remains below 1, it would signal that long-term holders are consistently realizing losses, which is a condition that has historically coincided with late-stage correction phases and important market inflection points.
For now, the combination of bearish market structure, resistance rejection, and weakening long-term holder profitability suggests that Bitcoin remains vulnerable to further downside pressure unless buyers can reclaim the $72k region and re-establish control of the broader trend.
The post Where Could BTC Bottom After Breaking Below Key Ascending Channel? (Bitcoin Price Analysis) appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Key Takeaways
- The European Commission may reveal next week that Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services meet the threshold for Digital Markets Act regulation.
- A conclusive determination is anticipated by the close of 2025, although the schedule remains flexible.
- Upon formal classification, both platforms must comply with requirements regarding interoperability, preventing vendor lock-in, and eliminating preferential treatment of proprietary services.
- This investigation stems from a November 2024 EU declaration recognizing both corporations maintain “exceptionally dominant market positions” in cloud infrastructure.
- Multiple significant service disruptions affecting AWS and Azure have intensified regulatory focus on the sector.
The European Union is advancing toward subjecting Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services to regulatory oversight through its Digital Markets Act legislation. Bloomberg reports the European Commission may unveil its initial assessment within the coming week.
The DMA framework specifically addresses major digital platforms that possess what European authorities characterize as “gatekeeper” market influence. Should Azure and AWS receive official gatekeeper status, they’ll be obligated to adhere to regulations crafted to ensure competitive fairness.
Implications of Gatekeeper Classification
Once designated under the DMA, both cloud platforms must satisfy interoperability standards. Additionally, they’ll encounter limitations designed to eliminate practices that trap customers within their ecosystems and prohibit giving preferential treatment to their own offerings over competitor alternatives.
Regulators expect to finalize their determination before 2025 concludes. Nevertheless, individuals with knowledge of the proceedings indicate the timeline remains subject to adjustment.
The examination began in November 2024 following the European Commission’s acknowledgment that Microsoft and Amazon maintain exceptionally strong market positions within cloud computing. This declaration initiated the official investigation process.
European lawmakers established the DMA to combat monopolistic practices among dominant technology companies operating across the continent. The legislation has previously been enforced against corporations including Apple and Google in different technology sectors.
Service Disruptions Intensify Regulatory Pressure
Regulatory attention on these cloud infrastructure leaders has intensified following several prominent service failures. AWS experienced an extended outage lasting approximately 15 hours that affected major clients including Apple, McDonald’s, and Epic Games. A distinct Azure disruption in October disabled Alaska Airlines’ passenger check-in infrastructure and interrupted legislative operations at the Scottish Parliament.
These technical failures highlighted the extent to which modern digital commerce relies upon a concentrated group of cloud service providers.
Both Microsoft and Amazon declined to provide statements when contacted for this report.
The Commission has yet to release its official assessment publicly. Should the initial conclusions remain unchanged, both organizations will receive an opportunity to submit responses prior to any binding determination.
Cloud computing infrastructure has emerged as a priority surveillance area for EU regulatory bodies, reflecting the sector’s rapid expansion and the extensive number of enterprises dependent upon these platforms.
This probe represents one component of the EU’s comprehensive effort to enforce competition standards across the largest operators in digital infrastructure services.
Prediction market Kalshi is reportedly in early, informal talks with investment banks about an initial public offering (IPO), despite increasing regulatory scrutiny over sports betting contracts on these platforms.
Kalshi is in early-stage talks to go public via an IPO after the platform surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, unidentified sources familiar with the matter told news outlet The Informant, according to a Friday report.
A spokesperson for Kalshi declined to comment on the matter.
The reported IPO discussions come as sports betting contracts account for more than half of Kalshi’s weekly notional trading volume, even as those markets face mounting legal challenges from US states.
Sports betting contracts were the leading category on Kalshi, representing about 53% of its weekly notional trading volume, according to Dune data. Sport-related betting was also the leading category on Polymarket, accounting for about 69% of its weekly trading volume.
Kalshi doubled its valuation to reach $22 billion after closing a $1 billion Series F funding round led by Coatue Management, Cointelegraph reported on May 7.
Kalshi weekly notional volume by category. Source: Dune
US regulators are cracking down on sports-related prediction market contracts
Kentucky became the latest state to sue five prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of “operating unlicensed and illegal sports betting and gambling platforms,” Cointelegraph reported on Thursday.
Related: Polymarket users cry foul after Strategy sale market resolves to ‘no’
At least 17 other states have taken prediction market operators to court, attracting the involvement of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
State authorities argue that sports event contracts require state-level licenses, while prediction markets claim their event contracts are swaps regulated under federal commodities law.
The CFTC also argued that event contracts qualify as “swaps” as they are based on binary events. On May 14, the CFTC issued a no-action letter seeking to ease event contract reporting rules.
CFTC no-action letter on prediction markets. Source: CFTC.gov
The CFTC has sued at least five states in a bid to cement its authority over prediction markets, including Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois.
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Japan’s Financial Services Agency has suspended part of moomoo Securities’ operations for three months and ordered the brokerage to strengthen its internal controls after regulators found compliance, customer protection, anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity failures.
Summary
- Japan’s Financial Services Agency has barred moomoo Securities from acquiring new customers for three months after finding compliance, AML, and cybersecurity failures.
- Regulators said the brokerage incorrectly labeled 78 non NISA eligible U.S. investment products as tax exempt assets and failed to adequately address the issue for affected clients.
- Authorities also cited shortcomings in suspicious transaction monitoring, stock transfer handling, and internal governance, prompting a business improvement order and management overhaul.
The Financial Services Agency said on June 19 that moomoo Securities must stop soliciting and accepting applications for new accounts from June 19 through Sept. 18. The regulator also issued a business improvement order that requires the company to clarify management responsibility and submit a plan to prevent similar issues from recurring.
The action follows an investigation by Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, which concluded that the brokerage expanded its business and introduced new services without establishing adequate compliance and risk management systems.
FSA cites NISA misrepresentations and compliance failures
Regulators said moomoo Securities incorrectly presented investment products as eligible for Japan’s Nippon Individual Savings Account program even though the products did not qualify under the tax-advantaged scheme.
The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission found that between early 2025 and early 2026, the brokerage displayed 78 U.S. exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes as NISA-eligible assets on its smartphone trading platform. The commission said retail investors subsequently purchased products that did not qualify for tax-free treatment.
Japanese authorities stated that the firm did not adequately address the issue after discovering the mistake. Regulators said the company failed to proactively contact affected customers or restore annual investment allowances impacted by the transactions.
The watchdog also cited restrictions on domestic stock transfers. The commission said moomoo Securities had declined customer requests to move Japanese stocks to other brokerages since early 2024, limiting clients’ ability to transfer assets outside the platform.
Financial authorities said the company also failed to properly comply with anti-money laundering obligations. The commission found that more than 1,500 rejected or flagged account applicants had not undergone sufficient reviews for suspicious activity because the firm incorrectly believed screening requirements applied only to approved accounts.
Japanese regulators said the brokerage had not conducted required examinations or reporting related to suspicious transactions for an extended period.
Cybersecurity and governance concerns
The Financial Services Agency said cybersecurity controls were also inadequate. Regulators found that management failed to maintain a complete inventory of important transaction systems and did not properly assess vulnerabilities affecting critical infrastructure.
The agency ordered the company to establish clearer accountability among executives and strengthen its internal management framework. Moomoo Securities must submit a detailed business improvement plan to regulators by July 21.
Moomoo Securities is the Japanese subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Futu Holdings, an online brokerage group listed on the Nasdaq. The company has expanded rapidly through its mobile investment platform and has surpassed 2 million app downloads in Japan while promoting low-cost trading in U.S. stocks.
The enforcement action comes as other parts of the Futu group continue expanding overseas. Moomoo Crypto, a separate subsidiary under the Futu umbrella, recently extended its cryptocurrency trading services into Texas, adding to operations in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The U.S. platform offers trading in 52 digital assets and supports direct transfers between external crypto wallets and customer accounts.
The case adds to a period of heightened oversight of digital finance activities in Japan. Earlier this year, the Financial Services Agency proposed stricter standards for stablecoin reserve assets and introduced additional supervisory requirements for financial institutions involved in cryptocurrency-related services as part of broader reforms under the country’s updated digital asset framework.
Oman has launched Omanhash, a national Bitcoin mining pool for licensed crypto mining companies operating in the country.
Summary
- Oman launched Omanhash as the official pool for licensed Bitcoin miners under state oversight rules.
- The pool is expected to consolidate about 10 EH/s in its first operating phase initially.
- Enegix provides technology and liquidity infrastructure, while Frontier Technologies handles local operational cooperation in Oman.
The pool was introduced under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology.
Under the approved regulatory structure, Omanhash will serve as the only official pool for licensed mining firms. Licensed miners are expected to connect to the pool rather than route hashrate through outside providers.
Pool targets 10 EH/s in first phase
Omanhash is expected to consolidate about 10 EH/s of computing power in its first phase. EH/s, or exahashes per second, measures the amount of computing work directed toward Bitcoin mining.
The pool is being managed with Frontier Technologies LLC, an Omani blockchain and Web3 company. Enegix Global is providing the technology platform and liquidity infrastructure.
Enegix Chief Business Development Officer Olzhas Amirov said, “This is our second sovereign mandate.” He added that clear licensing rules help miners operate legally and keep communication open with authorities.
Oman builds on mining investment
The launch follows years of mining and data-center investment in Oman. Enegix said mining and data-center infrastructure in the Salalah Free Zone has attracted more than $700 million since 2022.
The country has used crypto mining as part of a wider digital infrastructure strategy. Omanhash now gives the state more visibility over licensed mining activity, energy use, and pool-level reporting.
Oman is choosing regulation over a ban. The new model keeps licensed mining inside a formal system while giving authorities closer oversight of domestic hashrate.
As previously reported by crypto.news, Oman has already been discussed as part of the broader shift toward sustainable Bitcoin mining hubs. That coverage placed Oman alongside other regions exploring large-scale mining and energy-linked infrastructure.
The Omanhash launch also connects to a broader debate about miner incentives and network behavior. Crypto.news has covered research into selfish mining, where timing and pool behavior can affect how miners compete for block rewards.
Oman’s move does not change Bitcoin’s core rules. It does, however, create one of the clearest examples of a state-supervised mining pool model.
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