Prediction markets are lowering the chances of the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 as the Senate turns to Russia sanctions and federal nominations before its August recess.

CLARITY Act loses its place on the Senate schedule

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has not scheduled immediate action on the CLARITY Act, narrowing the path for the crypto market structure bill before lawmakers leave Washington.

The Senate is instead moving forward with federal nominations and legislation imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran. Preliminary action on the crypto bill remains possible during the week of Aug. 3, but the chamber is scheduled to begin its summer recess after Aug. 7.

According to Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn, the timetable has become the main threat to passage.

“The calendar is no longer merely an obstacle. It is now the enemy.”

Thorn estimated that lawmakers needed to begin the floor process by July 30 to leave enough time for procedural votes and debate. The Senate’s decision to prioritize other legislation makes that timeline increasingly difficult.

A vote after the recess is still possible. However, senators would return closer to the November midterm elections, when campaigning could displace complicated legislation requiring bipartisan negotiations.

Senate vote math leaves little room for defections

Most legislation needs 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster, while Republicans control 53 seats.

Thorn argues that the bill’s effective Republican support may be closer to 50. Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul have not committed to voting for the measure, while Mitch McConnell’s hospitalization could prevent him from participating.

Under that scenario, Republicans would need 10 Democratic votes to advance the bill.

The Senate Banking Committee approved its version of the CLARITY Act in May by a 15-9 vote, with two Democrats joining Republicans. Both Democratic supporters warned that their committee votes did not guarantee backing on the floor without further changes, particularly to ethics provisions governing public officials’ crypto interests.

President Donald Trump later accepted the inclusion of ethics restrictions, helping Polymarket odds reach 53% on July 21. Those gains have since reversed, with the market showing roughly 34% odds at the time of publication.

Kalshi showed traders assigning a 42% probability to crypto market structure legislation becoming law before the end of 2026.

Trump ties deepen the partisan divide

SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said Democratic opposition may persist because Trump has made the bill part of his political agenda.

“They will do everything they can to block it because he wants it,” Scaramucci said.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has made a similar argument, warning that the “Trump narrative” has turned crypto regulation into a partisan dispute.

Democrats have raised concerns about the adequacy of the proposed ethics rules, citing Trump’s family-linked crypto activities. They have also sought stronger consumer protections, enforcement powers and restrictions covering officials’ indirect financial interests.

Republicans have made several concessions to attract Democratic votes, but the revised language has not produced enough public commitments to clear the 60-vote threshold. The bill would also return to the House if the Senate approves a materially different version, adding another step before it could reach Trump’s desk.

Bitcoin slips as US regulatory uncertainty continues

Bitcoin traded near $63,800 at the time of publication, down about 1.6% over the previous session after moving between roughly $62,772 and $64,953.

The decline coincided with the Senate delay, though the timing alone does not establish that the CLARITY Act caused the broader market pullback. Macro conditions, derivatives positioning and weaker demand can also affect daily price movements.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $11.64 million in net outflows on July 27, led by an $8.82 million withdrawal from BlackRock’s IBIT. Ether funds attracted $9.23 million, while XRP ETFs added about $592,000.

For US investors, another delay would preserve the existing mix of SEC and CFTC oversight, court decisions and state-level rules instead of creating a single federal market structure. The bill is not dead, but failure to begin the Senate process before the August recess would leave its 2026 prospects dependent on a narrower post-election legislative window.

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Markets are split on whether the Federal Reserve will hike rates or stay on hold on Wednesday, but analysts say bitcoin BTC$63,853.29 may be less vulnerable than AI-driven tech stocks.

Bitcoin BTC$63,853.29 recovered from its intra-day losses to trade flat just below $64,000 on Tuesday, while AI-linked technology stocks stumbled again ahead of one of the most uncertain Fed meetings in years.

Markets currently price a 70% probability that the Fed leaves rates unchanged on Wednesday and a 30% chance of a surprise 25-basis-point hike, CME FedWatch data shows. The split reflects Chair Kevin Warsh’s reduced use of forward guidance, leaving investors with less clarity on the central bank’s next move, according to derivatives analytics firm Block Scholes.

“Tomorrow’s FOMC meeting, Kevin Warsh’s second as chairman of the Fed, is one of the most uncertain in years,” said Thahbib Rahman, research analyst at Block Scholes. Looking at every Fed meeting since 2015, he noted that only two have seen markets more divided over the outcome.

Signs of decoupling

Even with that uncertainty hanging over markets, bitcoin has largely held its ground in July while chipmakers and other AI favorites have come under pressure, raising the possibility that crypto is beginning to diverge, at least at the margin, from traditional risk assets.

Crypto security firm Blockaid reports that losses from hacks and other onchain security incidents exceeded $1 billion in the first half of 2026, marking the highest number of security incidents in a six-month period tracked by the platform.

In Blockaid’s H1 2026 security report published Tuesday, Ethereum and Solana led the network-level loss tally, with stolen funds of roughly $332 million and $326 million, respectively.

Key takeaways

• Over $1B lost: Blockaid recorded total crypto losses above $1 billion across H1 2026.
• 212 security incidents: The period included 212 incidents, with more high-threshold exploits verified in H1 2026 than in all of 2025.
• Ethereum dominated by code exploits: The report attributes most Ethereum losses to application and smart-contract vulnerabilities.
• Solana losses driven by key compromises: More than 98% of Solana’s losses stemmed from compromised keys rather than contract bugs.
• Biggest single exploit was KelpDAO: Blockaid identified the largest incident as KelpDAO’s exploit at $292 million.

H1 2026: incident volume climbed, and major exploits shaped outcomes

Blockaid’s report covers 212 security incidents from the first six months of 2026. While the number of incidents rose, the distribution of losses was also shaped by a small set of very large events.

The largest single exploit Blockaid highlighted came from KelpDAO, which it linked to losses of $292 million. Blockaid also reported that it verified 3.4 times as many high-threshold exploits in H1 2026 compared with all of 2025, suggesting a higher frequency of severe, high-impact events rather than only a few outliers.

At the network level, Ethereum and Solana were responsible for nearly all of the most significant stolen-funds figures in the report. Blockaid attributes these differences not only to what applications exist on each chain, but also to how attackers executed their operations.

Why Ethereum losses reflected risk in high-value protocols

According to Blockaid, Ethereum saw the largest losses in H1 2026, driven primarily by incidents that stemmed from code exploits—meaning vulnerabilities in applications, smart contracts, or components interacting with them.

Blockaid said Ethereum’s highest-loss events included key compromises involving Humanity Protocol and StablR. In addition, CoWSwap was identified in the report as the only major Ethereum incident classified as a user mistake, rather than an exploit of protocol code.

Looking beyond individual cases, Blockaid outlined recurring Ethereum attack methods that included weaknesses in bridges and smart contracts, unauthorized access to privileged accounts, and market manipulation techniques. The report frames Ethereum as a persistent target partly because it hosts many of the sector’s highest-value building blocks—restaking platforms, stablecoins, and decentralized exchanges.

For investors and operators, the implication is straightforward: as long as the chain continues to concentrate high-value protocols and liquidity, attackers can profit from both direct smart contract vulnerabilities and operational failures (such as privileged account access) that turn code risk into real-world theft.

Solana’s surge: fewer contract bugs, more key and signer compromises

Solana’s H1 2026 losses came in at roughly $326 million, nearly matching Ethereum. Blockaid describes this as a substantial increase versus about $127 million in stolen funds during 2025.

Notably, Blockaid says the increase was not mainly caused by a rise in smart contract exploits. Instead, the report points to compromised keys as the dominant driver: more than 98% of Solana’s losses in the period were tied to key compromises.

Blockaid connected a large portion of those losses to incidents involving Drift Protocol and Step Finance, which the report linked to North Korea-linked cyber groups.

Blockaid also described a different profile for Solana attackers compared with Ethereum. Where Ethereum’s losses were largely associated with vulnerabilities in protocol code, Solana incidents were centered on signer infrastructure and organizational security controls. In Blockaid’s accounting, only a small portion of Solana losses came from code exploits—citing Raydium and Volo as examples of the remaining code-related cases.

For teams building on or around Solana, this is a clear operational reminder: security reviews can’t stop at smart-contract audits. The report’s emphasis on keys, signing infrastructure, and broader security posture suggests that threat models need to treat custody, signing workflows, and privileged access as first-class attack surfaces.

What to watch next: exploit severity, not just incident counts

As Blockaid’s data shows, H1 2026 combined higher incident volume with a significant jump in verified high-threshold exploits. Readers should watch whether future quarters keep the same balance—especially whether Solana’s key-compromise trend persists and whether Ethereum’s code and privileged-access attack patterns accelerate as new high-value applications launch.

Tokenized asset specialist Ondo Finance ONDO$0.4030 has abandoned plans to build a conventional layer-1 blockchain, instead introducing a trading network it says is better suited for the next wave of onchain financial assets.

Dubbed Ondo Network, the system marks a shift from the company’s February 2025 vision for Ondo Chain, a blockchain for institutional finance and tokenized real-world assets. After building its new perpetual futures platform, Ondo Perps, the firm said it concluded that a traditional blockchain wasn’t the best tool for handling the speed and privacy institutional trading requires.

Ondo Perps is the first application using the network, with plans to offer tokenized assets as collateral for trading.

The pivot comes as tokenization gathers momentum across Wall Street. Tokenization — the process of representing traditional assets such as stocks, bonds and funds as blockchain-based tokens — is gaining traction as firms look to modernize capital markets with faster settlement and around-the-clock trading. At the same time, perpetual futures, once largely confined to crypto markets, are expanding to traditional assets such as stocks and commodities like oil and gold.

Beyond issuing tokenized assets

Ondo has emerged as one of the sector’s largest issuers, with about $2.6 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasury products across OUSG and USDY and roughly $850 million in tokenized equities, according to rwa.xyz. The firm’s broker-dealer obtained last week FINRA approval to launch regulated markets and services for tokenized securities.

Flare launches Flare Smart Accounts v1.3, enabling XRP holders to access DeFi vaults with a single XRPL wallet signature.

Flare today announced the release of Flare Smart Accounts (FSA) v1.3, making it possible for XRP holders to mint FXRP and deposit it into yield-generating vaults with a single XRPL signature.

For XRP holders, accessing DeFi has often meant creating new wallets, bridging assets between chains, and managing gas tokens before earning a single dollar in yield. Flare Smart Accounts v1.3 removes much of that complexity. Users can now choose a vault, sign once using the XRPL wallet they already use, and Flare completes the rest automatically. No separate EVM wallet, gas token, or manual bridging is required.

The update builds on growing momentum for XRPFi. Since February 2026, the amount of FXRP deployed in DeFi has grown by nearly 75%, increasing from 82 million to 144 million FXRP. More than 40 million XRP is currently earning yield through Flare Smart Accounts, while nearly 24,000 Smart Accounts have already been created.

“Millions of XRP holders have wanted access to DeFi, but the experience has been too complex,” said Filip Koprivec, CPO at Flare network. “With Smart Accounts v1.3, users can go from XRP to yield with a single signature while remaining fully non-custodial.”

The update reduces what previously required two separate XRPL signatures to a single transaction. The user’s XRP remains secured on XRPL through FXRP’s 1:1 collateral model while Flare mints FXRP and deposits it into the selected yield strategy. Behind the scenes, the Flare Data Connector (FDC) verifies the XRPL transaction on Flare, allowing a smart contract linked to the user’s XRPL address to carry out the requested actions automatically.

The release also expands the range of yield strategies available through Flare Smart Accounts with the addition of the Clearstar Flare XRP Yield Vault. Users can now choose between two actively managed FXRP vaults with different approaches to generating yield.

The Monarq XRP Yield Vault, operated by Monarq, majority-owned by FalconX, combines options, basis trading, funding-rate capture, and on-chain DeFi strategies, dynamically adjusting allocations as market conditions change. The newly added Clearstar Flare XRP Yield Vault takes a fully on-chain approach, deploying FXRP across lending and liquidity protocols on Flare, including Avant and Euler. Every position is publicly verifiable on-chain, and the strategy has previously managed more than 33 million FXRP in deposits.

Flare is also expanding access by adding support for Ledger, Xaman, Joey Wallet, and WalletConnect, including Bifrost. These integrations join the existing D’CENT support, allowing more XRP holders to access Flare’s yield infrastructure through the wallets they already use.

As part of the release, Joey Wallet, a self-custodial XRPL wallet with under-3-second onboarding and social login support via Web3Auth, now embeds Flare Smart Accounts directly as an in-wallet dApp. Users can mint FXRP and deposit into yield vaults without leaving the wallet.

“There’s a lot of overlap between the XRPL and Flare communities, so integrating Flare Smart Accounts just made sense,” said Christopher Troia, Co-Founder of Joey Wallet. “It brings a breath of fresh air for XRP holders, letting them start putting their XRP to work in a seamless way.”

Users can get started at fsa.flare.network/vaults or through supported wallets, including Joey Wallet, Xaman, and D’CENT.