Florida Rep. Mike Haridopolos has renewed his push for the CLARITY Act as Senate delays narrow the bill’s path to passage before the August recess.

Haridopolos warns US crypto leadership is at risk

Haridopolos, a Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, defended the CLARITY Act during a July 28 appearance on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria. He argued that the legislation is needed to keep digital asset activity within the United States.

“This is about making sure that American markets are the premier markets in the world.”

Haridopolos also accused Senate Democrats of using procedural delays to block legislation supported by voters. Fox Business described the bill as stalled as lawmakers approach their summer break.

Haridopolos voted for the House version in July 2025. The measure passed by a bipartisan 294–134 vote, with 78 Democrats joining 216 Republicans, according to the House Financial Services Committee.

The legislation would establish separate responsibilities for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Its backers say those rules would give exchanges, token issuers and blockchain developers a clearer route to operate in the US.

Senate schedule delays CLARITY Act vote

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has temporarily shifted floor attention toward a group of federal nominees and the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.

That schedule makes action on the CLARITY Act unlikely before the final week of the current session. The Senate’s summer break is scheduled to begin after August 7, with a state work period running from August 10 through September 11, according to the official Senate calendar.

Thune has indicated that the Senate may still take preliminary action before the break, but leadership first needs to determine whether enough votes are available. The bill requires at least eight Democratic votes to advance under the current Senate balance.

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the legislation by a 15–9 vote in May, with two Democrats supporting it at the committee stage. However, both indicated that their support did not guarantee a floor vote without further changes.

Ethics and state enforcement remain disputed

Negotiations now center on restrictions covering elected officials and their digital asset interests. The Senate draft would temporarily bar certain officials, including the president and vice president, from issuing or sponsoring crypto assets until January 2029.

Enforcement would rest with the Justice Department. Democrats have objected because the draft would prevent state attorneys general from acting if federal officials decline to bring a case. The bill needs more Democratic support before it can move forward.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has raised a separate concern over state authority. She argued that the bill could override state digital asset rules and weaken local efforts to pursue crypto scams.

James called for stronger anti-money laundering, customer identification and cybersecurity requirements. Crypto-related complaints to her office have tripled over the past three years, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.

What the delay means for US crypto markets

The delay does not immediately change the legal status of crypto assets, US exchange operations or spot crypto ETFs. However, it extends uncertainty over which regulator would oversee token trading, fundraising and digital commodity markets.

Support remains broad among crypto companies and parts of Wall Street. Coinbase, Ripple, the Digital Chamber and other industry groups backed the House bill, while Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon recently supported advancing the Senate version despite calling it imperfect.

September may provide the next opportunity if lawmakers fail to act before recess. The Senate would still need to pass its version, reconcile it with the House bill, and return the final text for congressional approval. Failure to complete those steps before the end of the current Congress could push the market structure debate into 2027.

Open interest in perpetual contracts tied to stocks, metals and oil has doubled since late May as major crypto exchanges expand beyond digital assets, CryptoQuant reported.

TradFi perpetual open interest climbs above $2B

TradFi perpetual contracts have become one of the fastest-growing areas of the crypto exchange market, according to CryptoQuant’s report.

The products give traders continuous exposure to traditional assets, including metals, crude oil and equities. Unlike standard futures, perpetual contracts do not have a fixed expiry date and use regular funding payments to keep their prices close to the underlying market.

Open interest in these products remained between roughly $350 million and $500 million during spring 2026. It then rose sharply from late May, crossing $2 billion by July.

The increase allows crypto exchanges to compete more directly with traditional trading platforms. Crypto venues can offer the contracts around the clock, including during hours when conventional stock and commodity markets are closed.

Despite the rapid growth, TradFi perpetuals remain small compared with crypto derivatives. CryptoQuant estimated that the segment represents only around 3% of the roughly $65 billion held in cryptocurrency perpetual contracts.

Binance extends its derivatives lead into TradFi

Binance holds the largest share of open interest in both categories, showing how established crypto exchanges are using their liquidity and trading infrastructure to enter traditional asset markets.

CryptoQuant’s headline snapshot placed Binance’s TradFi perpetual open interest at around $720 million, equal to roughly 35% of the market. Bybit and Gate followed with about $381 million each.

Together, the three exchanges accounted for around 70% of TradFi perpetual open interest. Adding OKX and Bitget brought the top five’s share to approximately 93%, leaving the remaining capital spread across smaller venues.

The concentration mirrors the structure of the crypto perpetual market. Binance held about $22.86 billion, or 35%, of crypto perpetual open interest in the report’s main snapshot. Bybit followed with $9.67 billion, while Gate held $8.61 billion.

Those three platforms controlled approximately 63% of crypto perpetual open interest. The five largest exchanges, including Bitget and OKX, accounted for about 81%.

Crypto perpetuals remain below previous peaks

Aggregate crypto perpetual open interest has expanded five to six times since early 2023, when it stood near $12 billion to $15 billion.

Capital in outstanding contracts reached about $80 billion in September 2025 and returned to a similar level in early 2026. It has since fallen by roughly 20% to around $65 billion.

CryptoQuant interpreted the decline as evidence of deleveraging or capital withdrawals rather than fresh money entering the crypto derivatives market. The fall contrasts with the growth in products tracking traditional assets.

However, the $2 billion TradFi segment is not yet large enough to offset changes in the broader crypto perpetual market. Its expansion instead shows exchanges adding new markets while retaining the same concentration of capital among the largest operators.

US perpetual futures market follows a regulated path

US investors are gaining access to similar products, but domestic contracts operate under a different regulatory structure.

Coinbase Financial Markets offers US customers CFTC-regulated perpetual-style futures that trade nearly around the clock. Unlike offshore perpetuals with no expiry, Coinbase’s contracts have five-year terms and use funding payments to stay aligned with spot prices.

The US market is also moving toward true perpetual contracts. In May, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved Kalshi’s cash-settled Bitcoin perpetual futures contract, which has no fixed expiration date and trades continuously. The regulator said its assessment applies on a contract-by-contract basis and does not automatically cover perpetuals tied to non-crypto assets.

CryptoQuant’s findings suggest that demand for continuous trading is spreading beyond cryptocurrencies. Whether TradFi perpetuals become a larger source of exchange capital will depend on liquidity growth, regulatory access, and whether traders continue moving activity from conventional venues.

Regional mediators are reportedly close to a proposal that could restart the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, although Tehran continues to deny seeking renewed talks with Washington.

Mediators push US-Iran MoU revival

Pakistan, Egypt and Qatar have stepped up efforts to revive the US-Iran framework signed last month, according to two sources cited by The Times of Israel.

The mediators have developed a proposal aimed at resolving conflicting interpretations of how the MoU applies to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran argues that the agreement gives it some authority over operations in the waterway, while Washington maintains that it does not.

Iran and Oman have reportedly approved the mediators’ proposal. A final decision now rests with US President Donald Trump, according to the report. The White House had delayed its response until after Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

Reaching an agreement would allow the US and Iran to restart negotiations before the MoU’s 60-day window expires next month. However, neither Washington nor Tehran has publicly confirmed that a new round of talks has been scheduled.

Strait of Hormuz remains the main dispute

Tehran has offered Oman a temporary system under which one direction of maritime traffic would pass through Iranian waters, with part of the opposite route also placed under Iranian control.

Iran rejected an Omani proposal to divide the shipping routes equally between the two countries. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi argued that the plan did not address Iran’s security concerns, according to Reuters.

Gharibabadi said the strait would remain closed if Oman rejected Tehran’s alternative. He also warned that Iran would not allow a third country to clear mines from the waterway, even if Oman invited it to participate.

At the same time, the Iranian official rejected reports that Tehran had approached Washington.

“Iran has not made any requests for negotiations or ceasefire with the US in the past 17 days,” Gharibabadi said.

He claimed that Washington had instead sought dialogue through Oman and offered assurances that the US would not take further military action. The US has not publicly confirmed those claims.

Oil drops as markets price in lower conflict risk

Crude prices fell sharply as the pause in US-Iran attacks raised hopes that diplomacy could resume, even without confirmation of a breakthrough.

Brent crude futures dropped 4.8% to settle at $84.09 per barrel on Tuesday, while US West Texas Intermediate declined 4.1% to $79.26. Both benchmarks reached their lowest levels in about two weeks.

Brent has now fallen about 16% over three sessions. However, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains limited, leaving energy markets exposed to another increase in tensions.

For US consumers and investors, a lasting agreement and fuller reopening of the strait could reduce pressure on fuel costs and inflation. That effect remains uncertain while the maritime dispute and the broader conflict remain unresolved.

What comes next for US-Iran talks

Trump and Netanyahu discussed Iran during their White House meeting, which the US administration described as “positive and productive.”

Netanyahu later said the two leaders shared the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. However, neither side announced whether Trump had approved the mediators’ proposal following the meeting.

The next signal will likely come from Washington, Oman, or the three regional mediators. Until then, reports of progress remain at odds with Tehran’s public denial that formal US-Iran negotiations are underway.

AmericanFortress, a blockchain security company, has proposed a cryptographic approach aimed at making today’s cryptocurrency wallets more resilient to potential future quantum attacks—without asking users to move funds, rotate keys, or change their wallet addresses.

In a technical paper posted to the Cryptography ePrint Archive, the company describes how it would add post-quantum protections while keeping wallet address formats intact. The work is positioned as compatible with seed-based hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets commonly used across networks that rely on elliptic-curve cryptography.

Key takeaways

• AmericanFortress says its scheme can preserve existing wallet addresses while layering post-quantum verification into the system.
• The approach leverages zero-knowledge proofs derived from a wallet’s seed phrase, rather than replacing the underlying elliptic-curve cryptography.
• The paper is published on ePrint and has not been peer-reviewed.
• Other teams are pursuing different post-quantum paths, including hardware-based quantum-resistant signing for EVM wallets.

Preserving wallet addresses while adding post-quantum safeguards

AmericanFortress’s proposal is laid out in a paper available on the Cryptography ePrint Archive (https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1508). The company frames its central goal as reducing the friction of post-quantum migration: if quantum-capable attackers ever become capable of breaking elliptic-curve cryptography, wallets would ideally upgrade their security properties without forcing users to transfer funds to new addresses.

According to the paper, the scheme is designed to fit seed-based HD wallet constructions—structures that generate many addresses and keys from a single seed phrase. AmericanFortress says the mechanism is compatible with wallets used across ecosystems such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, alongside other networks that depend on elliptic-curve cryptography.

The proposal does not rely on discarding the existing elliptic-curve-based key material. Instead, it introduces an additional verification layer: nodes would validate zero-knowledge proofs built from the wallet’s original seed phrase. Meanwhile, users would continue signing transactions using their current keys.

That distinction matters for practicality. Most post-quantum strategies require some form of migration—new address types, new key formats, or user actions that can be costly, operationally risky, or confusing at scale. AmericanFortress’s approach aims to shift the burden toward network-side verification rather than user-side replacement.

Why the focus on quantum readiness is accelerating

AmericanFortress’s paper ties its motivation to widely discussed concerns about cryptographic longevity. While quantum computers capable of breaking elliptic-curve cryptography do not exist today, researchers generally agree that sufficiently powerful systems could eventually render current elliptic-curve protections unreliable.

The company also cites an analysis from Bloomberg estimating that up to $470 billion in Bitcoin could be at risk in a scenario where sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available. Although such estimates depend on assumptions about adversarial capability and timeline, they underscore why the industry is working on “future-proofing” now rather than waiting for an end-game scenario to arrive.

In the meantime, multiple blockchain and research efforts have begun mapping migration routes. The paper situates AmericanFortress’s proposal alongside those broader efforts by aiming to minimize disruptions for end users—an especially sensitive constraint for wallet designs that must handle large volumes of legacy addresses and long-lived funds.

Hardware and account-level upgrades pursue other routes

AmericanFortress is not the only participant in the post-quantum wallet security race. On Tuesday, Freedom Factory introduced PQ1, which it describes as a post-quantum hardware wallet for Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks.

Where AmericanFortress’s approach is software-based and seeks compatibility with existing wallet address structures, PQ1 relies on post-quantum cryptographic signatures produced within dedicated hardware. Freedom Factory says the wallet uses SPHINCS+C10 signatures and is designed to secure transactions via ERC-4337 smart accounts.

The difference highlights a fundamental tension in post-quantum planning: some strategies aim to retrofit protection into the present without changing addresses, while others focus on moving security to new cryptographic primitives—often with hardware or account-system changes to manage complexity. For users, these distinctions can determine whether upgrades feel like an update or like a migration.

What broader initiatives suggest about the next migration steps

Industry momentum toward quantum resistance is visible across multiple ecosystems. In recent months, a Strategy-led consortium pledged $15 million to fund Bitcoin quantum security research. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation published a proposal outlining a path for migrating accounts to quantum-resistant cryptography. Separately, Algorand has stated plans to introduce quantum-resistant accounts by 2027.

Taken together, these efforts suggest that different networks are converging on the same problem—protecting cryptographic guarantees in a post-quantum world—but not converging on a single technical method. Some will emphasize protocol-level migration, others will rely on account abstraction, and others will attempt compatibility layers that reduce changes for users.

For readers tracking practical progress, the key question is how proposals like AmericanFortress’s would be integrated at the network level: whether nodes can verify the required zero-knowledge proofs efficiently, how the scheme would be standardized, and what changes would be needed for wallet software and transaction formats to support broader adoption.

As post-quantum work shifts from theory to implementations, watch for how (and how quickly) cryptographic proposals move from ePrint into peer review, prototype testing, and—crucially—real protocol or client integrations. Even if quantum threats remain hypothetical in the near term, the winners will likely be the approaches that minimize operational disruption while remaining verifiable at scale.