Russia Passes Its Crypto Law, and Bitcoin ETFs Post Their Best Run Since May

The White House reached an ethics deal on the CLARITY Act yesterday and sent it to Republican senators.

Russia’s lower house of parliament passed its first comprehensive crypto law the same day. And US spot Bitcoin ETFs just closed their best five-session run since May.

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Market-Moving News

Two major legislative moves landed yesterday on opposite sides of the world, and neither fully closes the story. The CLARITY Act ethics deal is a genuine breakthrough that moved Polymarket odds from 32% to 43% overnight, but Democrats still haven’t seen the text.

Russia’s lower house passed a crypto property law, but it still needs the Federation Council and Putin’s signature. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs posted their longest inflow streak since May, while BTC quietly pushed above $66,000 for the first time since mid-June.

The sentiment gauge hasn’t caught up yet. These moves are happening ahead of it.

Security

Zilliqa Halts Native ZIL After Ledger App Exposes Keys

Zilliqa suspended native ZIL transactions after confirming a critical flaw in its Ledger app could expose private keys from signatures already recorded on-chain.

The bug has existed since the app launched in 2019. Zilliqa detected possible exploitation on July 19 and isolated the cause on July 21. No verified loss figure has been disclosed.

Five Signatures Can Break a Key

The flaw weakened the random nonce used in native Zilliqa signatures. A buffer-copy error set the top 64 bits to zero, leaving enough predictability for an attacker to work backward.

With roughly five publicly visible affected signatures, an attacker could reconstruct a private key using lattice-reduction techniques. The issue sits in the Zilliqa Ledger app’s native signing path, not in Ledger hardware generally or the blockchain itself.

Old Keys Stay Exposed

Zilliqa halted native transactions to stop further draining while it coordinates a fix with Ledger. A corrected app can prevent new weak signatures, but it cannot erase vulnerable signatures already stored on-chain. Previously exposed keys may need to be retired.

EVM-compatible transactions and Zilliqa software development kits remain unaffected, narrowing the scope but not the severity of the impact for native Ledger users.

Take: You are looking at a hardware wallet lesson where the device remained secure, but the signing software broke the protection around it. If exposed keys cannot be reused safely, the higher cost may come from rebuilding trust and migrating affected users, not only from undisclosed losses.

TradFi

Kraken Parent Takes xStocks Beyond U.S. Markets

Payward partnered with investment infrastructure provider GTN to expand xStocks beyond U.S. equities, starting with Hong Kong-listed shares.

U.K., European, and South Korean assets are expected to follow, subject to licensing and regulatory approvals. The partnership also paves the way for xStocks to expand beyond equities into other tokenized asset classes. The framework already supports more than 500 tokenized securities.

Global Stocks Move Into One Wallet

GTN provides execution, custody, ledgering, and recordkeeping across more than 90 markets. Payward plans to use that infrastructure to place international equities inside the same on-chain framework already used for U.S. stocks and ETFs.

Investors could eventually hold assets from multiple regions in one wallet, trade them around the clock, and move them across supported platforms. xStocks has processed more than $35 billion in transaction volume and has nearly 200,000 holders worldwide.

Licenses Decide the Rollout

Hong Kong comes first, but no launch date or individual tickers have been disclosed. Institutional distribution through GTN also depends on the required licenses. U.K., European, and South Korean expansion remains planned rather than live.

The larger test is whether tokenized equities can keep the rights, liquidity, and market access investors expect from traditional shares while adding blockchain portability.

Take: Tokenized stocks are moving beyond a U.S.-focused product, giving you access to a broader global market strategy. If Payward and GTN secure approvals, geography could matter less for on-chain portfolios, but regulation will still determine which markets arrive first.

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Markets

Tokenized Equity Perps Hit $470B in Monthly Volume 

Tokenized real-world asset perpetuals generated about $470 billion in trading volume in June, up 450% from $85 billion in January.

The expansion came mainly from equity contracts, which allowed traders to take leveraged, round-the-clock positions in publicly traded companies and pre-IPO shares without owning the underlying securities.

Equities Overtake Commodities

Tokenized equity perpetual volume grew roughly sevenfold between January and June. SpaceX-linked SPCX was the most-traded equity contract across crypto venues during June, generating more than $66 billion as the company entered public markets.

Semiconductor names, including Micron, Intel, SanDisk, and SK Hynix, also saw heavy activity. Traders are choosing synthetic exposure because it offers leverage, short selling, and access beyond traditional market hours.

Volume Concentrates at the Top

Three platforms handled more than 80% of June’s RWA perpetual volume.

Binance accounted for nearly half of the market, followed by Hyperliquid and OKX. Such concentration gives a small group of venues considerable influence over liquidity, pricing, and access.

The $470 billion figure measures repeated derivatives trading, not $470 billion of stocks placed on-chain. Leverage can create enormous turnover without proving equivalent long-term investment demand.

Take: Tokenized equity perps put you inside a market where trading traditional assets matters more than owning their blockchain versions. If volume continues to outpace spot adoption, crypto’s biggest contribution to tokenization may be leveraged price discovery rather than digital shareholding.

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Future Forward

The CLARITY Act is the only event that matters on the legislative calendar over the next two weeks. Everything else is noise by comparison.

Crypto Conferences / Events:

💎 AI x Crypto Expo (Through next week — Silicon Valley, wrapping up)

Active Airdrop Programs:

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

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

Regulatory Milestones:

🏛️ CLARITY Act Revised text expected this week. Senate floor vote before early August recess.

🏛️ Russia crypto law Federation Council vote expected within 14 days, Putin signature to follow

Crypto Know-How: What an “Authorized Participant” Actually Does and Why It Matters for Bitcoin Price

You’ve seen Bitcoin ETF inflow data in every newsletter this month. Here’s the mechanism that makes those numbers move the actual price of Bitcoin, not just the ETF ticker.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs don’t trade Bitcoin directly on the open market when you buy or sell shares through your brokerage. Instead, the process runs through an intermediary called an authorized participant, typically a large institutional broker-dealer like Jane Street or Goldman Sachs.

When demand for ETF shares rises, an authorized participant buys Bitcoin on the spot market, delivers it to the ETF custodian (Coinbase Custody for most major US funds), and receives newly created ETF shares in return.

Those shares are then sold to retail investors. When investors sell their ETF shares and the fund needs to return cash, the process reverses: the authorized participant hands back shares, the custodian sells Bitcoin, and returns cash to the authorized participant.

This creates a direct mechanical link between ETF flows and Bitcoin spot price. Five consecutive days of net inflows mean authorized participants were net buyers of Bitcoin in the spot market for five consecutive days. That’s not sentiment. It’s a rule-based purchase that happens regardless of what any individual trader thinks Bitcoin is worth.

Research estimates that ETF flow mechanics now explain roughly 45% of weekly Bitcoin price moves. When $727 million flows into ETFs over five sessions, the spot market feels all of it through this mechanism.

Understanding authorized participants explains why watching the daily ETF flow dashboard is now one of the most reliable leading indicators for short-term Bitcoin price direction.

Everything Else

• EV names are seeing renewed interest, as investors look for companies that could benefit most if the market expands as expected over the next few years.

• Arthur Hayes reportedly bought approximately $2.53 million worth of ETH through a wallet linked to the BitMEX co-founder yesterday as Ethereum climbed back above $1,900, adding to on-chain signals that large holders are positioning ahead of further CLARITY Act developments. 

• France ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket, citing regulations that prohibit unlicensed prediction market services from operating for French users, making France one of the first EU countries to take enforcement action against a decentralized prediction market since MiCA took effect. 

• Kraken launched USD-settled Bitcoin and Ethereum options contracts requiring no crypto collateral, allowing traders to gain options exposure using only dollars in what the exchange described as the most significant product simplification in crypto derivatives history.