PA Daily Report | The U.S. Senate releases the latest version of the “Clarity Act”; Crypto exchange BitMEX will shut down on September 23

Today’s News Brief:

1. Robotics company Atoms completes a $1.7 billion funding round led by a16z

2. Crypto exchange BitMEX announces it will shut down on September 23 and has stopped new user registrations

3. Kazakhstan approves rules for strategic digital mining; mining companies receiving power allocations must transfer part of their mined output to the national reserve

4. The U.S. Senate releases the latest version of the “Clarity Act”: moral rules prohibit public officials from issuing tokens, effective until 2029

5. An interchain bridge operated by AFX, a protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem, was attacked, with about 24.15 million USDC stolen

6. Grayscale: Bitcoin may already be at the bottom; a macro perspective is better than the four-year cycle

Regulation & Macro

MOFCOM: China and the U.S. are soliciting input on tariff reduction arrangements and will push for implementation as soon as possible

Meng Huating, Director of the Foreign Investment Administration Department (focusing on foreign investment) of MOFCOM, said at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office that the economic and trade teams of China and the U.S. are maintaining close communication on specific arrangements such as the trade council’s framework, functions, and operating model, and are exploring a reciprocal tariff reduction framework for their respective $30 billion scales. China is broadly soliciting opinions from domestic enterprises, business associations, local governments, U.S. business associations with U.S. capital, and other stakeholders on related tariff reduction arrangement recommendations; the U.S. is also soliciting public comments on the trade council and reciprocal tariff reduction arrangements. Both sides will maintain close exchanges, agree on specific product tariff reduction arrangements and push implementation as soon as possible, and further expand bilateral trade.

Kazakhstan approves rules for strategic digital mining; mining firms receiving power allocations must transfer part of their mining output to the national reserve

The Kazakhstan government has approved the “Strategic Digital Mining Implementation Rules,” granting enterprises eligibility for electricity quota allocations for a 10-year term by obtaining power allocation from energy production organizers at the highest fee rate. As a condition for receiving the quotas, enterprises must transfer part of the cryptocurrencies produced by their mining operations to the Astana Hub autonomous cluster fund; subsequently, these assets will be handed over to a national investment company under the National Bank for trust management, to replenish the country’s strategic crypto currency reserves. Operators participating in strategic digital mining must submit applications through the E-licensing database, which will be reviewed and approved by a dedicated committee. If approved, digital miners must, within five business days, sign an agreement with the Astana Hub autonomous cluster fund and sign electricity purchase and sales contracts with the energy production organizer.

Beijing: Encourages the development of a Token economy and increases support such as compute vouchers

The Beijing Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the “Several Measures of Beijing on Accelerating Development Led by Intelligent Agents,” promoting development led by innovation from intelligent agents and being the first to cultivate new forms of intelligent economy. Encourage the development of Token (token) economy. Drive innovation entities to develop general-purpose processors that are compatible with intelligent agent system calls, complex task scheduling, and high-frequency decision-making. Develop low-latency, high-throughput dedicated inference chips. Encourage innovation entities to tackle key technologies such as inference architecture; reduce inference costs through heterogeneous collaboration, compute-and-storage collaboration, and intelligent scheduling; accelerate application-layer efficiency optimizations such as inference cache reuse and intelligent task routing; optimize end-to-end and improve Token efficiency. Reshape product forms and service models, and cultivate new commercial models such as Token as a Service (TaaS), Agent as a Service (AaaS), and Result as a Service (RaaS), so that more Token new products and new services that meet conditions can be included in the scope of procurement products for service vouchers for small and medium-sized enterprises. Increase support such as compute vouchers; encourage eligible subnational unions to explore issuing Token vouchers, agent service vouchers, and other accelerators to promote deployment and application of intelligent agents.

The U.S. Senate releases the latest version of the “Clarity Act”: moral rules prohibit public officials from issuing tokens and the act runs until 2029

U.S. Senate Republicans released the latest text of the Clarity Act (616 pages in total), with an expected fastest submission for a full Senate vote next week. The new text adds moral provisions prohibiting public officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, while allowing them to continue investing in digital assets and requiring disclosure of the sale of crypto assets exceeding $1,000. Covered officials would also be required to sell crypto assets and investments in crypto companies, or place them into blind trusts that the officials cannot control. The Department of Justice will be responsible for enforcement, but Democrats believe state attorneys general should also participate. The moral provisions have a sunset clause and will expire on January 20, 2029. The “Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act” in the bill provides a safe harbor for custodial developers, clarifying that they do not fall under “money transmitters,” and has won broad support from the crypto industry; however, law enforcement agencies and Catholic leaders have warned it could weaken anti-human-trafficking and investigative capabilities. The bill also adds 25 provisions to respond to law enforcement agencies’ requests. The crypto industry generally welcomes the latest text of the bill, but Democrats quickly oppose it on the grounds that the strength of the moral provisions is insufficient—because the provision involves former U.S. President Trump’s crypto holdings, raising concerns about the bill’s outlook in the Senate.

The Senate Majority Leader plans to hold a vote on the Clarity Act as soon as next week, even if no agreement is reached with Democrats

The Senate Majority Leader John Thune plans to hold a vote on the Clarity Act as soon as next week, even if no agreement is reached with Democrats.

U.S. Sen. Lummis: The moral rules and other provisions in the Clarity Act will be discussed further

U.S. Clarity Act’s chief negotiator Senator Cynthia Lummis said that although the latest bill text has been released, multiple items including moral provisions will continue to be discussed over the weekend, and the latest text is not the final version. Lummis revealed that Republican negotiators and Democrats have been consulting “for weeks in a row,” but have hit a stalemate on whether state attorneys general can bring criminal or civil lawsuits under the moral provisions—this is a “clear red line” for many senators and the White House, since the White House has been sued multiple times by state attorneys general. Lummis said that state governments could instead sue crypto exchanges that list违规 assets. Democratic senators said the bill still lacks enough support; Elizabeth Warren believes the current text would barely affect Trump’s crypto business, and that misconduct would be ignored by the DOJ and automatically excused after leaving office. Lummis said anti-money-laundering provisions may continue to be negotiated, and the added provisions include addressing crypto ATM fraud. The bill needs 60 votes to move forward; the Senate will recess on August 7, and the timing for the vote is still unclear.

U.S. SEC Commissioner Peirce warns that crypto Vaults and lending strategies may involve securities law regulation

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce issued a statement warning that the act of “putting” a crypto asset on-chain does not automatically exclude related activities from the scope of federal securities laws. Crypto vaults and lending strategies that use smart contracts to allocate assets on-chain to generate returns, if the staking, lending allocation, interest rates, acceptable assets, LTV ratios, and liquidation thresholds are determined by particular individuals or teams, could constitute a common enterprise, an investment company, or securitized notes; relevant participants need to examine whether they would touch regulatory requirements such as securities offerings and investment adviser obligations. Peirce said she welcomes practitioners to communicate with the SEC about compliance pathways, and to provide feedback on how existing rules might be adjusted to accommodate vaults and on-chain lending.

Project Updates

Crypto exchange BitMEX announces it will shut down on September 23 and has stopped new user registrations

Crypto exchange BitMEX will officially close at 12:00 on September 23, 2026 (Beijing time). From now on, it will stop new user registrations. The board of directors of the parent company HDR Global Trading Limited decided to close the exchange after strategic review. The platform will operate normally before the shutdown, but starting August 26 at 12:00 it will restrict opening new positions; users can only reduce positions, and any remaining positions after the shutdown time will be forcibly closed. KYC users who have not withdrawn assets before the shutdown time will be charged a monthly account management fee of $50 or 1% of the balance (whichever is higher); the fee may be increased. BitMEX reminds users to beware of phishing scams and states that withdrawal processing may be delayed due to factors such as blockchain confirmation time, but all assets are beyond liabilities.

Binance Alpha will open today at 19:00 for airdrop claim and trading; threshold is 256 points

Binance will open Binance Alpha airdrop claim and trading today at 19:00 (UTC+8). Users holding at least 256 Binance Alpha points can claim the token airdrop on a first-come, first-served basis until the airdrop pool is exhausted or the activity ends. Please follow Binance’s official channels for the specific airdrop tokens.

UK-listed The Smarter Web Company reduces holdings by 178 BTC to repay debts

UK-listed The Smarter Web Company repaid Smarter Convert convertible notes two weeks early and paid TOBAM Group approximately $11.6985 million. It completed the repayment by selling 177.89 bitcoins (average price of $65,762). The company’s CEO said that although he had previously recognized the flexibility of this structure, he does not currently believe it is an appropriate capital solution. After the repayment was completed, the company held 2,700 bitcoins. Any related potential share issuance has been canceled.

After lying low for 3 months, attackers of Drift Protocol begin money laundering via Tornado Cash

After the April 4 Drift Protocol attack on the Solana chain caused a loss of $285 million, the attackers lay low for three months, then began transferring funds through Tornado Cash today, batching deposits into the Tornado Cash Router at 100 ETH per transaction, with multiple transfers per minute.

Verus Ethereum cross-chain bridge attacked; about $7.53 million stolen

Verus Ethereum cross-chain bridge was attacked; about $7.53 million was transferred to an address starting with 0xCFd0. CertiK noted that the bridge may not have verified whether the amount input on the Verus side matched the payment amount, similar to the cause of the security incident that occurred in May.

Arbitrum ecosystem protocol AFX-operated cross-chain bridge attacked; about 24.15 million USDC stolen

The cross-chain bridge operated by AFX, a protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem, was attacked at 5:30 Beijing time on July 23, and about 24.15 million USDC was stolen. Blockaid is working with the Arbitrum team to respond to the incident, communicate with the affected protocols, and assist in freezing the stolen funds. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder confirmed that the relevant transactions originated from a third-party protocol; Arbitrum’s native bridge was not attacked or exploited, and coordination with the third-party team will follow along with more details provided.

Upbit today will list o1.exchange(O) on KRW, BTC, and USDT markets

The Korean crypto exchange Upbit will list o1.exchange(O) on the KRW, BTC, and USDT markets. Deposits and withdrawals are expected to open within 2 hours after the announcement is released, and trading is expected to start at 15:00 local time on July 23. Deposits and withdrawals support only the Base network.

SecondFi security incident update: the attacker is suspected to be a North Korean hacker; the vulnerability has been fixed and asset-recovery tools are under development

SecondFi released an update on its security incident investigation: from June 21 to June 23, 374 wallets were hacked, and about 16.1 million ADA (about $2.6 million) was stolen. The investigation found two separate groups of attackers: the main attacker is suspected to be the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacker organization, with sophisticated methods and sufficient funds; meanwhile, another secondary attacker independently targeted different wallets during the same period, with no overlap between the two. The root cause was a cryptographic vulnerability in the wallet software when generating signatures; the same vulnerability also appeared in code copies that were published to GitHub without authorization. The vulnerability has been fixed, but given the severity of the incident, SecondFi decided to shut down the SecondFi and Yoroi wallets. The team is developing asset-recovery tools based on zero-knowledge proofs (expected to be released in August) and a wallet export feature (expected in early August) to help users safely migrate assets. SecondFi emphasized that it will not proactively direct-message users or request private keys and seed phrases.

Samsung Electronics announces support for stablecoins in Samsung Wallet

At the Galaxy Unpacked 2026 event, Samsung Electronics announced that Samsung Wallet plans to introduce support for stablecoins, integrating payments, rewards, and digital assets into a unified service. Samsung said this will be among the first models among major phone brands to support stablecoins as a native feature. Samsung Wallet has expanded from a payment tool into a digital hub that can store keys, IDs, and boarding passes. The event also unveiled its first financial service based on Samsung Wallet—Samsung Galaxy Card—in partnership with Barclays and Visa, launched in the U.S. Samsung said its Knox security platform protects sensitive information with end-to-end encryption.

Binance Perpetual Contracts will list POPMARTUSDT U-margin perpetual contracts today

The Binance Perpetual Contracts platform will list the POPMARTUSDT perpetual contract at 10:30 on July 23, 2026 (GMT+8). It tracks the share price of POPMART International Group Co., Ltd. (HKEX: 9992), with maximum leverage up to 25x.

B² Network suspected to have been attacked; attacker stole $3.86 million and bridged to Zcash

On BNB Chain, B² Network is suspected to have been attacked. The attacker stole 8.59M B2 tokens (about $3.86 million), exchanged them for 5,409 WBNB (about $3.11 million), then bridged them to Ethereum. The funds are currently being transferred to Zcash via NEAR Intents.

Funding & Investment News

Robotics company Atoms completes a $1.7 billion funding round led by a16z

Atoms, a robotics company backed by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, completes a $1.7 billion round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with Ben Horowitz joining the board. Equity investors in this round include Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group, and Uber. Horowitz’s investment thesis focuses on specialized robots rather than humanoid robots; he said that in heavy industries, specialized robots are far more suitable than humanoids for completing most tasks.

Future Asset in South Korea completes acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit

Future Asset in South Korea has completed the acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit. Korbit said the operating entity, user deposits, and personal data processing remain unchanged. Earlier, on July 9, it was reported that Future Asset Group received approval to acquire 92.06% of Korbit for 133.4 billion KRW.

Revolut valuation rises to $115 billion, becoming Europe’s most valuable private company

Crypto-friendly digital bank Revolut is valued at $115 billion in an employee share-sale transaction, up 53% from $75 billion in November last year, making it Europe’s most valuable private company. The price per share is $2,017. The transaction allows employees and existing shareholders to sell shares rather than raising new capital for the company. This valuation has surpassed Barclays’ market capitalization of about $95 billion. Revolut reported 2025 pre-tax profit of $2.3 billion (up 57% year over year), revenue of $6.0 billion (up 46%), and over 75 million customers. The main Revolut app supports trading of over 200 crypto assets, asset transfers out, and staking, and operates an independent crypto exchange, Revolut X. The company obtained a MiCA license last year, received a UK banking license in March, and has applied for a U.S. national bank license. It has previously discussed pursuing an IPO with a valuation of up to $200 billion in the future.

Opinions & Analysis

Analyst: BTC short-term holders have suffered losses for nine straight months; the $68.8K cost basis is a key resistance

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost said BTC short-term holders (positions held no more than 155 days) have been recording losses for about nine consecutive months, which is typical of a bear market. The short-term holder cost basis is around $68.8k, and it is still facing pressure. As Bitcoin tries to hold above $65,000, this group is expected to realize about 4% losses. The analyst pointed out that $68,800 is a key level that Bitcoin should be able to reclaim; reclaiming it could bring short-term optimism and confidence to the market, which the market urgently needs.

Grayscale: Bitcoin may have already bottomed out; a macro perspective is better than a four-year cycle

Grayscale Research’s head Zach Pandl said in a post that the bottom of Bitcoin’s bear market may already be in place. He believes Bitcoin has “matured” as a macro asset, and its price will be driven by macro factors such as real interest rates and economic growth rather than the four-year halving cycle. Historically, Bitcoin bear markets have corresponded with slowing economic growth and rising real interest rates; the current macro backdrop is similar to previous periods. If the Federal Reserve abandons rate hikes and the economy stays healthy, Bitcoin’s price may already have bottomed.

Bitwise CIO: Crypto market shows signs of a bottom; the next bull run will be driven by the fusion of on-chain finance and traditional finance

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan wrote an analysis stating that the crypto market is showing signs of a bottom: since July 1, Bitcoin has risen 9% while the Nasdaq has fallen 6%, ETF flows have turned positive, and market sentiment has improved. Hougan believes the next bull market will be driven by the fusion of on-chain finance and traditional finance, with key tracks including stablecoins, tokenization, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and institutional DeFi. He suggests focusing on two types of opportunities: one is crypto-native applications represented by Hyperliquid (HYPE)—with real revenue and a strong tokenomics model (99% of revenue used for buyback and burn of HYPE), which is up 146% this year; the other is traditional financial institutions represented by Robinhood (HOOD)—its Layer 2 blockchain Robinhood Chain attracted more than $300 million in deposits within two weeks, processes 3.6 million trades per day, and supports tokenized stocks trading 24/7 for users in 120 countries. Hougan said he likes mainstream assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, as well as crypto stocks, and is also watching institutions such as Coinbase, Figure, BlackRock, Visa, Stripe, and JPMorgan that are scaling up in crypto.

Cathie Wood: Even if SpaceX’s stock price is down 48%, it could still become “the most important company in history”

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said in an interview with Fox Business that SpaceX could become “the most important company in global history,” even though its stock is down about 48% from its peak to $116.95, roughly 13% below the IPO price of $135. Wood said Starlink, space launches, and orbital data centers will create huge opportunities: Starlink, as a global communications network, has about 70% of satellites in orbit; orbital data centers can reduce compute costs and support advanced AI model development. SpaceX has already been leasing its data center compute capacity to companies such as Anthropic and Google. After Ark listed SpaceX, it has cumulatively bought about $80 million; in recent declines it added about $20.5 million more. SpaceX will release its first quarterly financial report on August 4; starting August 6, about 911.5 million shares’ insider lock-up periods will begin to expire, with a valuation of about $116 billion, viewed as the next key test for the stock price.

Franklin Templeton: Agentic AI is a “killer” use case for cryptocurrencies

Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and Innovation head Sandy Kaul said in a report that agentic AI will become the “killer use case” driving blockchain adoption. The report argues traditional payment networks are structurally and in speed not suitable for the needs of agentic AI: blockchain simultaneously records and settles, while Visa settlement takes 1 to 3 business days. That speed gap is crucial when AI agents perform thousands of micro-payments per hour. The report cites forecasts that by 2030, AI agents will account for 15% to 25% of U.S. e-commerce sales, and the agentic commerce market size could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Kaul believes that if each agent uses blockchain-native tokens to purchase data, compute, and API services, demand for tokens such as Solana and Ethereum will rise. Investors would then need to buy these crypto assets to capture the value of decentralized networks.

Multicoin: Unstaking large amounts of HYPE is not for selling; institutions need privacy

Multicoin Capital managing partner Tushar Jain posted on X that his team yesterday unstaked a large amount of HYPE tokens, but emphasized it was not for selling. Jain said their fund holdings are continuously tracked, so they have to periodically change wallet addresses; privacy protection is needed for institutional operations. This is also why he is bullish on Zama (ZAMA) and Zcash (ZEC): Zama unlocks privacy DeFi, and Zcash is a leading privacy-value storage chain. Jain said as capital markets continue to go on-chain, privacy becomes increasingly important.

Key Data

Analysis: Signals of improvement in U.S. Bitcoin demand; Coinbase premium narrows, ETF weekly flows turn positive

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said the weekly net inflow of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs has recovered to $439 million, the first clearly positive week since May. The Coinbase Premium Index narrowed to -0.042 after 78 consecutive days in negative territory, up about 80% from the February low of -0.229. U.S. spot demand is moving out of the maximum pressure period; although the discount has not disappeared, it has narrowed significantly, and the ETF fund flows returning to positive confirms improvement in market structure. However, the ETF group as a whole is still down 22% on average, with an average cost basis around $84,714; currently BTC is about $66,110. If prices rebound to that level, some holders may exit when they break even, creating potential sell pressure. The analyst noted that the key signal is that two metrics improve at the same time, but because the premium has been negative for 78 straight days, a sustainable reversal has not been confirmed. If the premium turns positive and weekly flows stay positive, it will confirm a regime shift; if flows turn negative again and the discount widens, the pattern from May to June will reappear.

Bitcoin spot ETF total net inflow yesterday was $68.987 million; net inflows for 7 straight days

On July 22, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net inflow of $68.987 million, continuing for 7 straight days. The largest single-day net inflow was BlackRock’s ETF IBIT, with a net inflow of $38.7795 million; its historical total net inflow reached $68.8k. Grayscale’s Bitcoin mini trust ETF BTC had a net inflow of $37.8773 million; its historical total net inflow reached $30k. The largest single-day net outflow was Grayscale ETF GBTC, with a net outflow of $38.2963 million; its historical total net outflow reached $50k. Bitcoin spot ETF total assets net asset value was $68.99M; the ETF net asset ratio was 6.08%, with historical cumulative net inflows of $68.99M.

Multicoin-linked wallet transfers another 93k HYPE; 490k HYPE transferred in two days

A wallet possibly belonging to Multicoin Capital transferred 490k HYPE (about $29.48 million) within two days. Today, it transferred 93k HYPE (about $5.48 million) to a new address; two days ago, it dispersedly transferred 397.5k HYPE (about $24 million) to multiple addresses before depositing them into Coinbase.

A massive whale again hoards $17.75 million WBTC and ETH; total holdings about $148 million

A whale that has built up more than $109 million worth of ETH and WBTC since July has again accumulated $17.75 million in assets. In the past 4 hours, it withdrew from exchanges 75 WBTC and 4,998 ETH; it has cumulatively accumulated 56.4k ETH and 700 WBTC, total value about $148 million. Average cost is around $1,742 and $64,205, with an unrealized profit of $11.42 million.

Ethereum spot ETF total net inflow yesterday was $72.6422 million; net inflows for 4 straight days

On July 22, Ethereum spot ETFs had a total net inflow of $72.6422 million, continuing for 4 straight days. The largest single-day net inflow was BlackRock’s ETF ETHA, with a net inflow of $53.4667 million; its historical total net inflow reached $2.65B. Fidelity’s ETF FETH had a net inflow of $19.1755 million; its historical total net inflow reached $27.41B. Ethereum spot ETF total assets net asset value was $51.85B; the ETF net asset ratio was 4.54%, with historical cumulative net inflows of $93k.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun deposits $15.65 million ETH and WBTC to Binance

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun deposited 6,009 ETH (about $11.56 million) and 62.31 WBTC (about $4.09 million) to Binance, totaling about $15.65 million. The fund sources include withdrawals from Spark Fi, Lido Finance unstaking, and WETH-to-WBTC swaps on Cowswap.

Grayscale filings reveal: 100 wallets hold 90% of Worldcoin’s circulating supply

In an SEC filing submitted by Grayscale for the Worldcoin ETF, it disclosed that about 90% of circulating WLD tokens are concentrated in 100 wallets, contrasting with the project’s vision to distribute fairly to as many people around the world as possible. The filing also admits that World Chain’s sequencer is operated in a centralized manner, and upgrades are coordinated and controlled by a small group of participants from World Foundation, Tools for Humanity, and Optimism, while governance is “still mainly guided by World Foundation.”

A massive whale buys 27k ETH via Galaxy Digital OTC, about $52.03 million

After lying low for 3 months, an anonymous whale bought 27k ETH (about $52.03 million) via Galaxy Digital OTC about 4 hours ago.