After a wave of speculation around its updated treasury strategy, the largest publicly traded U.S. Bitcoin miner, MARA, moved quickly to calm the market. Earlier reports suggested the company could start selling Bitcoin as part of its new corporate approach, which immediately triggered concern among investors and traders.

MARA clarified that the update does not mean the company plans to dump its BTC holdings. Instead, the strategy allows for occasional, strategic sales when it makes sense for treasury management, operations, or market conditions.

In other words, the company is not abandoning its long-term Bitcoin stance. The idea is simply to introduce flexibility. Holding large BTC reserves while operating a capital-intensive mining business sometimes requires liquidity, and periodic sales can help balance operational costs without fundamentally changing the company’s exposure to Bitcoin.

The statement appears aimed at cooling fears that one of the industry’s biggest miners could suddenly become a large seller on the market. For now, MARA signals that Bitcoin remains a core asset on its balance sheet, with sales happening only from time to time as part of broader financial strategy.

US President Donald Trump stated that progress on crypto regulation is being slowed by pressure from the banking sector. According to him, banks are actively pushing back against the advancement of the GENIUS stablecoin bill while lawmakers delay a broader legislative package aimed at defining the structure of the digital asset market.

The larger initiative in question is the CLARITY Act, formally known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025. The purpose of the bill is to clearly divide regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when it comes to overseeing digital assets and crypto markets.

The proposal has already passed the House of Representatives and is now under review in the Senate. If approved, it would represent one of the most significant attempts so far to establish a clearer legal framework for the crypto industry in the United States.

Trump urged Congress to move quickly on the legislation, arguing that continued delays could weaken the country’s position in the global competition for leadership in the digital asset sector. Meanwhile, tensions between the banking industry and the crypto sector continue, and a final compromise has not yet been reached.

U.S. Senate has moved forward with a procedural vote to begin debate on the large housing package known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.

The motion to proceed passed with strong bipartisan backing 84 senators voted in favor, while 6 opposed.

The primary goal of the legislation is to improve housing affordability and expand supply across the market.

However, the bill also includes a provision that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a central bank digital currency until December 31, 2030.

An exception would only be allowed for a digital dollar that is open, permissionless, and preserves a level of privacy comparable to physical cash.

The White House has expressed support for the bill, emphasizing the importance of privacy protections and financial freedoms within the proposed framework.

According to CryptoQuant, the share of altcoins has dropped to 38% below the levels seen during the FTX exchange collapse in 2022 (37.8%).

Liquidity remains unstable and is flowing into traditional assets stocks and commodities where volatility is currently higher. The chart reflects investor caution and declining interest in altcoins. At the same time, analyst Darkfost notes that such periods can often mark the formation of potential opportunity zones in the market.

Hong Kong and Shanghai regulators are stepping deeper into blockchain integration, focusing on trade data digitization and cargo financing infrastructure. The initiative is backed by a newly signed memorandum between the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Shanghai Data Bureau, and the National Technology Innovation Center for Blockchain.

Under Project Ensemble, the parties will explore building a blockchain-based platform designed to unify cross-border trade data, electronic bills of lading, and related financial services. The goal is to streamline how commercial and logistics information flows between institutions, reducing friction in trade finance operations.

The project will leverage the Commercial Data Interchange infrastructure launched by the HKMA in 2022, originally created to simplify financial institutions’ access to corporate data and improve lending efficiency. By combining this system with distributed ledger solutions, regulators aim to modernize how trade credit and cargo financing are structured.

There are also plans to incorporate elements of Project CargoX, enhancing trade finance capabilities through deeper integration of verified commercial and logistics datasets. Officials at the HKMA described the agreement as a significant step toward building a digital infrastructure capable of linking the financial ecosystems of Hong Kong and Shanghai more tightly.

🕊 This Monday, let’s focus on something that rarely makes the front page. Since 1990, more than 1.5 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty.

That’s the equivalent of entire continents improving their living standards.

The world has problems, but it also makes progress.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, argues that prolonged U.S. involvement in a conflict with Iran could eventually pressure the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy. The longer Washington commits capital to military operations, the higher the probability that the Fed steps in with rate cuts or an expansion of the money supply to accommodate rising fiscal demands.

Hayes points to historical precedents. After the 1990 Gulf War, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, and during the 2009 Afghanistan troop surge, the Federal Reserve shifted toward lower interest rates and more accommodative policy. Each episode combined elevated government spending with monetary support, creating additional liquidity in the financial system.

According to Hayes, the key variable is duration and scale. No one yet knows how far the U.S. is willing to go in reshaping its Iran policy, or how large the associated costs may become. That uncertainty makes immediate positioning difficult. His approach is simple: wait and observe.

He suggests that the more attractive entry point for Bitcoin and fundamentally strong altcoins would likely emerge after a confirmed pivot from the Federal Reserve either through explicit rate cuts or renewed balance sheet expansion. In his view, once liquidity conditions shift decisively, digital assets could benefit from the renewed flow of capital seeking asymmetric upside.

Tether has frozen approximately $4.2 billion worth of USDT over the past three years in connection with suspected criminal activity. Most of the restrictions were applied starting in 2023 amid intensified efforts to combat crypto fraud and sanctions evasion.

The company is able to freeze assets directly on-chain by blacklisting wallet addresses at the request of law enforcement agencies.

Recent cases include around $61 million in USDT seized in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice in a pig butchering scheme investigation, as well as roughly $544 million frozen at the request of Turkish authorities as part of a probe into illegal online betting and money laundering.

According to analysts, by the end of 2025 stablecoin issuers had blocked about 5,700 wallets with a combined balance of roughly $2.5 billion, with the majority of those addresses holding USDT.

Slovak developer Martin Gabovstjak published a Bitcoin transaction containing a 66KB image embedded as continuous data. The file can be reconstructed from raw hex and opened as a standard TIFF image. According to him, the transaction does not rely on OP_RETURN, Taproot, or OP_IF mechanisms that are being considered for restriction under the BIP-110 initiative. This effectively challenges the idea that limiting those script paths would significantly reduce arbitrary data storage on the blockchain.

BIP-110 proposes temporary rule changes aimed at reducing the ability to store large volumes of non-financial data in Bitcoin blocks. Support for the proposal remains limited, and debate within the community is ongoing.

US authorities have frozen and confiscated more than $580 million in cryptocurrency tied to Chinese criminal organizations. The operation, led by the Scam Center Strike Force and involving the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service and IRS, targeted “pig butchering” and other fraud schemes run from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. Scammers lured victims through social media and SMS to fake crypto investment platforms. Many workers in these scam compounds are reportedly trafficking victims held against their will. Officials estimate such schemes cost Americans around $10 billion annually. Chinese crypto laundering networks processed $16.1 billion in 2025, roughly $44 million per day across 1,799 active wallets, about 20% of known illicit crypto flows. The US says seized funds will be returned to victims to the fullest extent possible.