The window for US Congress to pass a comprehensive market structure bill on cryptocurrencies is closing, with the Senate set to go on recess in a matter of days, and lawmakers still have not announced clear plans to vote on the legislation.

In a Wednesday X post, Senator Cynthia Lummis said she anticipated that the Senate would vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act before the chamber breaks for its month-long August recess. The Wyoming lawmaker has been one of the biggest proponents for the crypto bill, which has split many members of Congress and industry leaders over different provisions on ethics, stablecoins and tokenized equities. 

“It’s just time to get people on the record,” said Lummis.

The CLARITY Act, which has been under consideration in the Senate since its passage in the House of Representatives in July 2025 with a 294-to-134 vote, still faces opposition from many Democrats looking for stronger ethics provisions affecting US President Donald Trump’s investments. The president has been under additional scrutiny since he disclosed he earned more than $1.4 billion from investments tied to digital assets in 2025.

Related: CLARITY Act failure could send crypto valuations lower: Bernstein

60-vote hurdle needed to pass CLARITY

As of Wednesday, Senate Democrats’ calendar showed no vote scheduled for CLARITY, giving the chamber only a few business days to resolve the matter. However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Republican lawmaker who would have the authority to schedule a vote, is reportedly still planning to do so before Saturday. The bill would need 60 votes in the Senate to invoke cloture and end a filibuster, allowing it to advance in Congress.

The bill also faces opposition from at least one Republican lawmaker, according to a recent Politico report. Senator Josh Hawley will reportedly withhold voting in favor of the bill until it addresses concerns from banks. Although lawmakers did reach a compromise on the bill with banking groups over stablecoin yield, some industry leaders have continued to push for provisions requiring crypto companies to have comparable licensing and restrictions as banks. 

After Friday, the Senate will be on recess until mid-September, pushing consideration of the crypto bill into the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

Magazine: Here’s why the CLARITY Act’s ethics deal may be so hard to reach

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Paranoid Bitcoiners are worried that Bitcoin clocks created by Coinkite, the firm behind recently-hacked hardware wallet Coldcard, could be spying on them.

The Blockclock, which features an electro-mechanical display, can be tweaked to showcase up-to-date Bitcoin prices, exchange data, and various other metrics.  

However, with the estimated $130 million Coldcard theft showing no sign of stopping, cautious Bitcoiners are becoming suspicious of the seemingly harmless machines.

Much of this suspicion appears to have been stoked by programmer and Bitcoin enthusiast “Wicked” who warned owners to “unplug” their device “immediately,” with very little by way of explanation.

“If you used your COLDCARD near them I would plan to move your funds out of an abundance of caution,” he said.

Unplug your BLOCKCLOCK immediately. And if you used your COLDCARD near them I would plan to move your funds out of an abundance of caution. Even if you dice rolled or used a passphrase. Breathe and be smart about your migration but this is not a drill. I’ll start up a space soon. pic.twitter.com/V06UQ7E6cn

— Wicked (@w_s_bitcoin) August 5, 2026

Read more: Coldcard hacker’s BTC wallet flooded with on-chain messages

Wicked’s post, whether completely seriousness or not, attracted 50,000 views and led to multiple Blockclock owners following the advice.

The growing paranoia even extended to Coinkite’s CTO Peter Gray, with pro-Bitcoin vintner Ben Justman claiming that, having learned that Gray worked on keylogging and remote computer viewing, he “wouldn’t feel safe” keeping the Blockclock. 

“I don’t own a Blockclock and who knows if there’s anything wrong with them, but I personally wouldn’t wanna touch anything that touched Coinkite,” said Justman.

Some posts posited the idea that the Blockclock may contain spyware, a theory that was further fueled by parody account Teddy Bitcoin, which claimed that Blockclocks contain “an authentic high-tech Russian military-grade listening device” called the “Ухо-9,” or “Ear-9.”

“This thing is so advanced it can capture private sounds with insane precision, right down to the exact faint hammering of individual letters into steel plates,” the account wrote. 

Some users, understandably, doubted Wicked’s claims, suggesting that the paranoia might be exaggerated and telling the programmer to “calm down.”

Bitcoin Magazine editor Shinobi described the paranoia as “Schizo theories about Coldcards wirelessly communicating seeds to them to phone home.”

Wicked replied to one comment asking if it was legit, saying, “No evidence of anything yet but I’m not risking it anymore.”

He’s since made a partial apology, claiming in an X Spaces that he posted about the Blockclock in a “schizo panic fear,” and that after talking to several people he trusts, “that fire in my mind has been doused.”

“My trust in Coinkite products has obviously been affected by all of this,” Wicked added.

Read more: 15 attackers now draining vulnerable Coldcard wallets, report

Coldcard urged users to move BTC 

Coinkite is dealing with the fallout from its weak seed phrase generation system that left several versions of its BTC wallet open to hackers. 

The firm has since warned Coldcard users to move their BTC elsewhere or risk being drained. 

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There have been at least 15 attackers taking advantage of the exploit, which have likely targeted thousands of victim wallets.  

Protos has reached out to Coinkite for comment and will update this piece should we hear anything back.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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The CLARITY Act missed a key procedural opening after Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on several other measures while bipartisan negotiations over the crypto bill continued.

CLARITY Act left out of Senate cloture filings

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 4668, the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, according to the U.S. Senate Daily Press. He also filed cloture on H.R. 6500, a substitute amendment to the continuing-resolution vehicle and Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general.

However, the majority leader did not make a corresponding filing for the CLARITY Act, leaving the crypto market structure bill without the procedural countdown required for an initial cloture vote.

Cloture on a motion to proceed would allow the Senate to limit debate and begin considering the legislation. The motion requires support from 60 senators, meaning Republicans cannot advance the bill without Democratic votes.

Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett said Thune’s decision to proceed with the college sports legislation indicated that negotiators had not reached a bipartisan agreement.

“Thune has filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the college sports bill,” Terrett wrote, adding that it “signals there’s still no bipartisan agreement on the Clarity Act.”

The omission does not formally kill the crypto bill. However, it reduces the time available to begin debate before senators leave Washington for the August recess.

Thune says negotiations are still underway

Thune later indicated that the CLARITY Act had not been abandoned and described the delay as a matter of sequencing.

“We’re sequencing it, but there are some things still out there that we want to do,” Thune said.

His remarks suggested that Senate leaders were still seeking an agreement capable of attracting support from both parties. Thune had previously said he expected market structure legislation to receive a vote, although he acknowledged the chamber faced a crowded schedule.

“I think market structure we’ll get a vote on. Whether we can get on it or not, we’ll see,” he told reporters on Aug. 3.

Ethics restrictions involving elected officials’ crypto holdings have emerged as one obstacle. Stablecoin rewards and protections for noncustodial blockchain developers have also featured in the negotiations.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has demanded stronger conflict-of-interest rules covering the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior officials and their families. Republicans need at least seven Democratic votes if all 53 GOP senators support cloture.

Crypto figures weigh the cost of further delay

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan warned that missing the pre-recess window could leave the bill in a “walking dead” phase. The legislation could remain active but face a months-long delay and greater procedural difficulties later in 2026.

Hougan nevertheless argued that the digital asset industry would continue expanding without immediate congressional action. He said Securities and Exchange Commission rulemaking could provide an alternative path while financial institutions increase their involvement in crypto.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce also expressed confidence that work on digital asset rules would continue.

“I’m still optimistic that the bill will get finished,” Peirce said.

She argued that legislation would provide clearer jurisdictional boundaries for investors, companies and regulators. Peirce added that the SEC could continue addressing areas including crypto custody, fundraising and tokenized securities regardless of the bill’s fate.

Prediction markets price a longer CLARITY Act delay

Prediction-market traders have become more cautious as the Senate’s procedural window narrows. Kalshi placed the probability of enactment before July 1, 2027, at 41%.

The odds increased to 58% for passage before Oct. 1, 2027, and 65% before Jan. 1, 2028. Those contracts indicate that traders see a longer legislative timeline as more likely than enactment during 2026.

The CLARITY Act would define the roles of the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission in overseeing US digital asset markets. Without congressional action, regulators will continue working under existing securities and commodities laws while the jurisdictional divide remains unsettled.

The bill’s next clear signal would be a cloture filing, a negotiated bipartisan agreement or a change to the Senate schedule. Until then, its immediate path to a floor vote remains uncertain.

The latest U.S. congressional primary elections this week saw another unusual setback for the crypto industry’s largest campaign fund when incumbent Representative Shri Thanedar got shut down by progressive challenger Donavan McKinney for a Democratic nomination in Detroit.

It cost the Fairshake political action committee more than $2 million, and the industry loses an incumbent ally in the House of Representatives who co-sponsored its version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and had also been active in other crypto legislation. His democratic socialist opponent is a blank slate on crypto issues, but he drew endorsements from Senator Bernie Sanders and progressive Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who also won his primary.

The super PAC’s spending on Thanedar represented its biggest financial commitment among the primaries in Michigan and Washington conducted on Tuesday. However, the spending from Fairshake and its affiliates prevailed in five other primaries, mostly backing incumbents: Bill Huizenga in Michigan (a Republican who was also a Clarity co-sponsor) and Democrats Suzan Delbene, Kim Schrier and Marilyn Strickland in Washington. Plus, the industry backed Amanda McKinney, a pro-crypto Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump, in a Washington GOP race.

DefiLlama has added Forgd’s market-maker leaderboard to its analytics platform, aiming to give traders, token teams, and liquidity researchers a more standardized view of how market makers perform across exchanges and individual tokens.

According to Forgd, the leaderboard aggregates data on spreads, market depth, trading volume, and uptime. The integration provides DefiLlama users with a dashboard that ranks market makers using consistent measurements for pricing quality, liquidity depth, reliability, and execution—rather than relying on fragmented, exchange-by-exchange metrics.

Key takeaways

• DefiLlama integrates Forgd’s leaderboard to surface market-maker performance indicators such as spreads, depth, volume, and uptime.
• Forgd claims broad coverage, with data spanning more than 500 token projects and 35 market-making firms using its tooling.
• Comparisons aim to be standardized, enabling users to benchmark liquidity providers across venues and token markets.
• Scores are not a pure “trading performance” grade, Forgd says: lower ratings may reflect incomplete “performance verification” opt-in rather than poor execution.

What DefiLlama’s new leaderboard adds

DefiLlama is widely used by the crypto community to track on-chain and protocol-level activity, liquidity, and cross-market performance. With the new integration, the platform extends beyond token analytics into a layer focused on the mechanics of market making—how liquidity is provided in practice.

Forgd told Cointelegraph that its dashboard ranks crypto market makers using standardized criteria, including pricing-related metrics (such as spreads), the capacity of markets to absorb trades (market depth), and reliability measures (uptime). By tying those inputs to an index, users can compare market makers in a way that is meant to be consistent across active engagements.

How the underlying data is sourced

Forgd says the leaderboard is built from data spanning more than 500 token projects and involves 35 market-making firms that use Forgd’s tools to monitor liquidity across their active engagements.

The company also positioned the leaderboard as a tool for token projects when it first launched in May—helping teams select, evaluate, and monitor liquidity providers. With the DefiLlama integration, the same dataset is now intended to be more broadly accessible to anyone using DefiLlama’s interface for market research.

Why liquidity teams and traders may care

In practice, liquidity quality is not just about how much trading volume exists—it’s also about how efficiently orders can be filled without excessive price impact and whether liquidity remains available under stress.

Ryan Celaj, DefiLlama’s head of research, said the integration adds another evaluation signal for market structure that complements commonly tracked metrics like volume and liquidity. In other words, two tokens with similar headline liquidity can differ meaningfully in how consistently market makers support them and how tight spreads remain as activity fluctuates.

For token teams, the promise is straightforward: an easier way to compare market makers on criteria that map more directly to trading experience. For traders and analysts, it offers a way to evaluate market resilience—especially when liquidity conditions change across venues or during periods of volatility.

Important caveat: scores may reflect verification coverage

While the leaderboard provides grades meant to summarize multiple dimensions of performance, Forgd cautioned that these ratings are not solely a reflection of how a firm trades.

“A lower grade on the index is not necessarily a judgment of a firm’s trading,” Forgd CEO Shane Molidor told Cointelegraph. He explained that the index can also reflect whether market makers have “fully opted into performance verification.” In that case, the scoring may partly track the amount of verified data a firm supplies to Forgd rather than an objective decline in execution quality.

This distinction matters for anyone using the leaderboard for decision-making. If a firm’s dataset is thinner because it has not completed verification, a low score could be as much about data availability as about market-making effectiveness. Traders and liquidity teams may therefore want to look beyond the headline rating and consider how much verified activity is reflected in a firm’s placement.

What’s next and what to watch

With Forgd’s leaderboard now embedded into DefiLlama, the main question for users is how quickly the integration improves cross-market comparability and whether verification coverage grows over time—potentially changing which firms appear toward the top. Investors and market participants should watch for how consistently uptime, depth, and spread metrics track real trading conditions, and whether new listings and opt-ins expand the reliability of the underlying index.

Large “smart money” holders are adding to their Bitcoin and Ether positions as crypto valuations drift toward levels commonly associated with late-stage bear markets, according to CryptoQuant’s latest Smart Money report, reviewed by Cointelegraph.

The blockchain analytics firm argues that the key signal is not just that whales are holding more, but that their balances have continued to rise during price weakness—an accumulation pattern that, historically, can line up with market bottoms even though it does not guarantee an immediate reversal.

Key takeaways

• CryptoQuant says Bitcoin whale balances (excluding exchanges and mining pools) rose to about 3.06 million BTC, up from roughly 2.87 million BTC in December 2025.
• The firm links the acceleration in Bitcoin accumulation to a period after BTC fell below $60,000 in June.
• For Ethereum, wallets holding 10,000–100,000 ETH collectively reached a record 19.6 million ETH, while very large holders added around 1.8 million ETH since mid-2025.
• In XRP markets, CryptoQuant notes “big whale” spot order sizes remained elevated, while a neutral 90-day taker cumulative volume delta points more toward passive absorption than aggressive buying.
• CryptoQuant also cites realized price—an estimate of the market’s average on-chain cost basis—as support for a potential move toward a bottom, though it warns further downside remains possible.

Whales build positions during weakness

CryptoQuant’s Smart Money report focuses on large-holder behavior as a potential guide to market direction. The underlying premise is that when major holders increase balances while prices are under pressure, they can effectively reduce liquid supply and concentrate ownership among fewer entities.

For Bitcoin, CryptoQuant reports that whale holdings excluding exchanges and mining pools climbed to approximately 3.06 million BTC, compared with about 2.87 million BTC in December 2025. The report highlights that accumulation accelerated after Bitcoin dipped below $60,000 in June, suggesting that at least some large investors continued to add despite worsening price conditions.

On Ethereum, CryptoQuant’s distribution-based view shows parallel strength. Wallets holding between 10,000 and 100,000 ETH collectively amassed a record 19.6 million ETH. Meanwhile, wallets with more than 100,000 ETH added roughly 1.8 million ETH since mid-2025, according to the report.

What the “smart money tell” implies—especially for bottoms

Beyond raw balances, CryptoQuant points to valuation metrics tied to cost. In particular, it references realized price—often used in on-chain analysis as an estimate of the average price at which coins last moved on-chain. The firm frames the spread between current prices and realized price as a sign the market may be approaching a bottom.

At the time of writing, CoinGecko data showed Bitcoin trading at $63,935, above its realized price of $52,900. Ether was quoted around $1,858, below its realized price of roughly $2,450. XRP traded near $1.10 versus a realized price around $0.75.

CryptoQuant’s assessment is that rising whale balances into price weakness are “the clearest smart-money tell,” and that similar accumulation patterns have historically preceded market bottoms. However, the firm also cautions that the market remains vulnerable to further downside, underscoring that whale accumulation can coincide with bottoms without guaranteeing the timing of a trend reversal.

Cross-market nuance: XRP shows absorption more than conviction

CryptoQuant’s report extends beyond Bitcoin and Ether to look at XRP market microstructure. It says average spot order sizes stayed in its “big whale” category while XRP traded between $1 and $1.20—indicating that large participants remained active in placing orders.

Yet CryptoQuant adds an important nuance: a neutral 90-day taker cumulative volume delta suggests passive absorption rather than aggressive buying. In practical terms, the indicator implies that while whales may be leaving significant liquidity footprints, the flow of taker-side demand has not been strongly one-directional, which can matter for how quickly price can respond to renewed buying pressure.

Context from other analysts on whether a bottom is forming

CryptoQuant’s on-chain framing is arriving alongside other research suggesting potential bottoming behavior. On Monday, 10x Research said Bitcoin could confirm a bear-market bottom if it posts a monthly close above $63,000, according to coverage on Cointelegraph.

Separately, K33 highlighted in a July 7 report that Bitcoin has historically reached cycle lows within weeks after more than half of circulating supply was held at a loss. This type of supply-at-loss perspective differs from realized price, but both approaches share a common theme: bottoms often appear when broader holder pain and valuation disadvantage have pushed into extremes.

Taken together, these views suggest a market that may be searching for stabilization rather than already having fully turned. CryptoQuant’s emphasis on late-stage bear valuations and its repeated warning about further downside reflect that tension: the evidence for “smart money” accumulation may be strengthening, but the path from accumulation to sustained recovery is not automatic.

Investors and traders watching this setup should focus on whether whale balance growth continues alongside improving price/realized-price relationships, and whether other bottoming conditions—such as the kind of monthly-close thresholds or supply-at-loss measures cited by separate research—start to align. Until then, CryptoQuant’s own message remains the most important watchpoint: accumulation during weakness can be a bottom signal, but it does not rule out additional volatility or downside.

Western Union has partnered with stablecoin infrastructure provider Rain to launch Stablecard, a digital wallet and Visa-branded card that enables users to hold and spend a US dollar-backed stablecoin, marking one of the company’s biggest moves into blockchain-based payments.

On Wednesday, Western Union said Stablecard allows users to hold, receive, transfer and spend USDPT, a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on the Solana blockchain.

Stablecard launched in 37 markets, with Western Union aiming to expand availability to more than 60 markets by the end of the year. Users can receive Western Union money transfers directly into a USDPT wallet, transfer funds to compatible crypto wallets and exchanges and spend their balances anywhere Visa is accepted, including through Apple Pay and Google Pay.

The launch reflects Western Union’s effort to expand its role in the global remittance market as stablecoins gain traction for cross-border payments. The product is aimed at remittance recipients and consumers in countries with volatile local currencies, offering them the ability to hold savings in a dollar-backed digital asset while spending through existing payment networks.

Western Union unveiled USDPT in May as part of its broader digital asset strategy, describing it as a stablecoin designed to align with the framework established under the GENIUS Act, the recently enacted US law that sets federal rules for the issuance and oversight of payment stablecoins. The company has already expanded the token’s ecosystem through exchange partnerships, with Bybit adding support for USDPT trading and transfers in June.

Related: Mastercard expands support to USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD stablecoin settlement

Stablecoins push deeper into global money transfers

Stablecoins are increasingly reshaping cross-border payments as users seek faster and lower-cost alternatives to traditional remittance services, particularly in Africa and South America. 

The trend has prompted established money transfer companies to expand into digital assets. Western Union rival MoneyGram recently launched MGUSD, a US dollar-pegged stablecoin on the Stellar network. The token is designed to integrate with the MoneyGram app through a self-custodial wallet, allowing users to hold dollar-denominated balances, send funds globally and convert them into local currencies when needed.

However, stablecoins are not a universal solution for remittances. A recent Bank of Italy study found that stablecoin-based remittances did not consistently outperform traditional payment channels on cost or speed. The researchers attributed much of the remaining friction to fiat currency on- and off-ramps, where converting between bank deposits, cash and digital assets accounted for most transaction costs and settlement delays.

Related: US, UK reaffirm support for stablecoins, tokenization in joint financial regulation talks