Banks Target CLARITY Act’s Stablecoin Rules, and Treasury Freezes $131M in Iranian Crypto

Banking groups fired a broadside at the CLARITY Act’s stablecoin provisions the same morning Treasury froze $131 million in Iranian USDT. Meanwhile, Aave made Chainlink’s CCIP its default standard for every cross-chain function in the protocol. 

And the June CPI came in at 3.5%, slashing Fed rate-hike odds from 43% to 13% and sending Bitcoin past $64,000. Three different stories, one shared theme: the rules of crypto are being rewritten in real time.

Growth Picks (Sponsored)

5 Stocks Showing Early Growth Signals

Many investors are seeing solid gains in today’s market, but solid gains often hide opportunities with far greater potential.

A new analysis highlights the 5 Stocks Set to Double, selected from thousands of companies showing early signs of powerful growth.

These picks feature strong fundamentals and technical indicators that often appear before meaningful upside.

Past editions of this research uncovered gains of +175%, +498%, and +673%.

Download the 5 Stocks Set to Double. Free Today.

*This free resource is being sent by Zacks. We identify investment resources you may choose to use in making your own decisions. Use of this resource is subject to the Zacks Terms of Service.
*Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk. This material does not constitute investment, legal, accounting, or tax advice. Zacks Investment Research is not a licensed dealer, broker, or investment adviser. 

Market-Moving News

The CLARITY Act has weeks left before the August recess and now has fresh opposition from an unexpected corner. Aave’s announcement accelerates a months-long shift of cross-chain liquidity away from LayerZero and toward Chainlink.

June CPI printed at 3.5%, dropping Fed rate hike odds from 43% to 13% and giving crypto its strongest single-session move in weeks. And this morning's Iran freeze confirms that USDT’s compliance infrastructure is more closely integrated with US foreign policy than most DeFi users fully appreciate.

All four are moving faster than the price chart suggested yesterday.

Industry

x402 Foundation Launches With 40 Members for Agent Payments

The Linux Foundation launched the x402 Foundation with 40 members, moving Coinbase’s payment protocol into formal open governance. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Adyen, Fiserv, Shopify, Google, AWS, Cloudflare, Ripple, Circle, Solana Foundation, and Stellar Foundation are part of the group. 

The protocol uses the long-reserved HTTP 402 “Payment Required” code to let clients pay servers directly. Most payments are small stablecoin transfers, usually USDC.

Software Starts Paying Software

x402 is built for a different kind of transaction. Instead of a person opening an account, adding a card, and approving every payment, software agents can pay for data, APIs, compute, content, or services as part of an internet request.

The protocol processed about 75 million transactions over the past 30 days, moving about $24 million between roughly 94,000 buyers and 22,000 sellers.

Big Names, Tiny Tickets

The average x402 payment is about 32 cents. That is exactly why the standard matters. Traditional payment networks were not built for millions of tiny machine payments, but AI agents may need to buy information or services on a per-request basis.

Visa processed $14.2 trillion in payments in fiscal 2025, so x402 is still tiny by global payment standards. The stronger signal is not volume yet; it is who is showing up before the market scales.

Take: The x402 launch puts you at the edge of a payment market built for machines, not checkout pages. If agent payments normalize, stablecoins may find their strongest use case in invisible internet transactions rather than in consumer wallets.

Regulation

Japan Sets 20% Crypto Tax Path as Parliament Passes Reform

Japan’s Parliament passed amendments that reclassify crypto assets as financial products under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

The overhaul creates the basis for a separate tax rate of about 20%, down from the current maximum of 55%. It also introduces three-year loss carryforwards and brings crypto under disclosure, market-conduct, and insider-trading rules used for securities.

Crypto Enters the Securities Rulebook

Japan previously regulated crypto mainly through the Payment Services Act. The new framework treats digital assets more like investment products, requiring clearer disclosures and tougher controls around unfair trading.

Unregistered operators would also face stronger penalties. Reclassification could remove a legal barrier to domestic spot crypto ETFs, but no Bitcoin or Ether ETF has been approved.

Lower Taxes Change the Incentive

A top rate of 55% discouraged some domestic activity and pushed traders toward offshore markets. A roughly 20% rate would align crypto gains more closely with stock investment income. Loss carryforwards could also make volatile tax years easier to manage.

Implementation still depends on cabinet ordinances and supervisory guidance, so the reform will not arrive all at once.

Take: Japan is giving you a market where crypto can gain securities-level legitimacy without escaping securities-level oversight. If the tax cut and ETF framework are implemented as planned, domestic participation could deepen, but stricter disclosure and enforcement will determine who benefits.

Free Report (Sponsored)

These 7 Stocks Just Made the Cut

This report focuses on a narrow group of stocks identified through a detailed screening process.

Analysts apply a combination of metrics to narrow down potential opportunities.

Past selections have shown strong momentum, but no outcomes are guaranteed.

The newest edition is now open for access.

Get the report now.

*This free resource is being sent by Zacks. We identify investment resources you may choose to use in making your own decisions. Use of this resource is subject to the Zacks Terms of Service.
*Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk. This material does not constitute investment, legal, accounting, or tax advice. Zacks Investment Research is not a licensed dealer, broker, or investment adviser.

TradFi

DTCC Starts Live Token Trades Inside $114T System

DTCC began limited production trades of tokenized stocks, ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries with nearly 40 financial and technology firms. JPMorgan converted part of its Invesco QQQ holdings at DTCC into tokens while preserving the option to convert them back into traditional shares.

Initial assets also include Microsoft and Circle shares, SPY, a short-term Treasury ETF, and U.S. government debt. DTCC safeguards more than $114 trillion in securities, so this moves tokenization into the machinery behind Wall Street.

Digital Twins Keep the Rights

These tokens are not wrappers that merely track market prices. They carry the same ownership, dividend, governance, and investor-protection rights as the securities held in traditional form.

Approved firms can use them for collateral transfers, repo transactions, and equity trades while keeping the underlying assets inside DTCC custody. Settlement can occur through DTCC’s Hyperledger Besu network or Canton Network.

October Becomes the Bigger Test

The current activity is limited production, not a public rollout. DTCC plans a broader commercial launch in October under a three-year SEC authorization covering selected highly liquid stocks, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries.

The test now is whether tokenization improves collateral mobility and settlement without weakening market protections.

Take: DTCC puts you inside the moment when tokenized securities stop imitating Wall Street and start entering its core infrastructure. If October expands these trades beyond a controlled group, blockchain settlement may become a market utility rather than a separate crypto experiment.

Market Warning Signs (Sponsored)

Multiple Wall Street Banks Issue Disturbing Note to Clients

Wall Street banks are warning that the next market crisis could be unlike anything investors have seen in decades.

If Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are right, portfolios could remain under pressure for 10 years or longer.

After repeated market shocks since 2022, some experts believe the instability could continue well into the 2030s.

See How to Defend Your Portfolio Now

*This ad is sent on behalf of TradeSmith at 1125 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. If you’re not interested in this opportunity, please click here.

Future Forward

The CLARITY Act’s Senate window is now the most critical event on the crypto calendar. Every week that passes without a floor vote is a week closer to the August recess. Beyond that, two major product launches and one airdrop program are active this week.

Crypto Conferences / Events:

💎 AI x Crypto Expo (This week through next week — Silicon Valley, AI agent product launches)

💎 Asia Onchain Finance Summit (This week — Hong Kong)

Active Airdrop Programs:

🎁 GRVT Booster Campaign (Closing this week, 1.5M GRVT tokens on TGE)

🎁 Hyperliquid Season 2 (Live through Q3, est. $600M)

🎁 Jupiter Jupuary Season 2 (Live now, est. $120M)

Regulatory Milestones:

🏛️ CLARITY Act Senate floor vote before August recess (hard deadline)

🏛️ FDIC stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act are expected this week

Crypto Know-How: How OFAC Actually Freezes Crypto, and Why It Happens in Seconds

Most people understand that the US government can sanction individuals and entities. What is less understood is exactly how that translates into crypto wallets being frozen in real time, and why centralized stablecoins like USDT are the primary vehicle for these actions rather than Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are permissionless networks. No issuer controls who can send or receive. When OFAC sanctions a Bitcoin wallet, it becomes illegal for US persons and entities to transact with that address, but the Bitcoin itself remains technically transferable. The enforcement burden falls on regulated intermediaries, exchanges, and custodians to refuse those transactions.

Tether is different. When Tether issues USDT, it builds an address-level blacklist function directly into the smart contract. Tether’s compliance team can call a function that permanently restricts a specific address from transferring its USDT balance anywhere, on any chain where that USDT exists. This requires zero cooperation from the underlying blockchain. It takes seconds, not weeks. It is irreversible without Tether’s active intervention.

This is why 78 banking groups are less alarmed about Bitcoin than they are about stablecoins: centralized stablecoins are already functionally integrated into the existing financial compliance system. USDT’s blacklist capability has now been used to freeze hundreds of millions in Iranian-linked wallets in 2026 alone. Circle’s USDC has equivalent functionality. Both companies participate in OFAC compliance programs.

For you, the practical point is this: USDT and USDC are not censorship-resistant money. They are dollar-denominated digital assets that operate within the same compliance framework as traditional banking, just with faster execution. If your use case requires censorship resistance, those are not your assets. If your use case is regulated finance, that compliance integration is the entire value proposition.

Everything Else

• Robotics stocks are gaining fresh attention, as investors look beyond the usual names and toward the companies quietly powering automation across factories, warehouses, surgery, and machine vision.

• JCB, Japan’s major card network serving over 140 million cardholders, signed an MOU with Circle to test USDC for cross-border payment settlement, giving the regulated stablecoin its highest-profile APAC card network partnership and extending institutional stablecoin infrastructure into Asian markets. 

• The US and UK announced a joint framework to align regulatory approaches for tokenized financial assets, including stablecoins and tokenized securities, with both governments committing to harmonized rules to reduce regulatory fragmentation and support cross-border digital asset markets.

• Moonbeam Network confirmed it will fully shut down at the end of this month, with Wormhole advising users to transfer all cross-chain external assets out via official Moonbeam channels before the cutoff date, as the chain exits the Polkadot ecosystem with a planned 1:1 GLMR migration to Base.

• Visa, Mastercard, and Ripple are now among 40 companies governing the x402 agentic payments protocol that Coinbase built and handed to the community, with the protocol settling approximately $24 million across 75 million payments last month at an average of 32 cents per payment.