Cryptocurrency and Blockchain
Cryptocurrency markets rallied as Bitcoin surged past $68,000 following a U.S. Treasury bond buyback expansion, triggering significant short liquidations. On the regulatory and institutional fronts, President Trump advocated for the CLARITY Act, while the SEC proposed new fundraising exemptions and World Liberty Financial received conditional approval for a national trust bank charter. Institutional expansion also advanced with FalconX launching a $1 billion credit facility and Ripple raising $275 million for its prime brokerage service.
President Donald Trump urged Congress on Wednesday to pass a fair version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act during a White House event flanked by executives from Coinbase, Kraken, and Ripple. The market structure bill, which passed the House in July 2025, has stalled in the Senate amid disputes over stablecoin rules, tokenized equities, and ethics provisions targeting the presidential family's crypto holdings. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has scheduled a cloture vote for mid-September, though the bill still faces a crowded legislative calendar and requires bipartisan support to clear the 60-vote threshold. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies are moving independently, with the Securities and Exchange Commission proposing safe-harbor rules for token offerings and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission convening its Innovation Advisory Committee. Traditional banks are tracking the legislation closely over provisions governing stablecoin yield products, while industry executives argue the statute is necessary to secure long-term legal permanence.
Bitcoin surged roughly 6% to over $68,000 after the U.S. Treasury doubled the size of its bond buyback operations to a minimum of $4 billion per operation. The policy shift injected liquidity into longer-dated nominal sectors and pushed the 30-year bond yield down by 9 basis points to 5.19%. The sudden market move triggered $1.4 billion in short liquidations over a four-hour window as bearish traders scrambled to cover positions. Ether and solana outperformed bitcoin with gains of 8.4% and 7% respectively, while crypto equities like Bullish and Coinbase climbed 13% and 11%. Gold also advanced 2.7% to $4,528 an ounce as broader risk appetite improved.
FalconX and Ethena launched a $1 billion secured lending facility to deploy assets backing the USDe synthetic dollar into overcollateralized institutional credit. The warehouse facility routes capital through a special purpose vehicle where FalconX originates, services, and manages collateral held at qualified custodians, while Ethena gains a first-priority security interest. This arrangement diversifies Ethena's yield sources beyond traditional crypto basis trades and perpetual-futures funding rates, which are vulnerable to sharp compression when leveraged trading demand drops. The $4 billion market capitalization protocol accesses traditional institutional lending avenues for corporate treasury management, trading strategies, and payments. Neither firm disclosed the facility's expected returns, loan terms, or the exact amount of capital initially deployed.