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The U.S. Senate has passed a housing affordability bill by a vote of 85 to five, which includes a provision to prohibit the issuance of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The bill contains language that forbids the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC or any equivalent digital asset, either directly or through financial institutions. This prohibition is scheduled to remain in effect for approximately four years, until the end of 2030. During his confirmation hearing, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh stated that a CBDC is a "bad policy choice." Additionally, President Donald Trump banned the executive branch from pursuing a CBDC through an executive order in January 2025. The bill will become law if it subsequently passes the House and is signed by President Trump.

Pro-crypto U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis is urging Congress to pass the Clarity bill, arguing that regulatory uncertainty is driving cryptocurrency developers overseas. Lummis stated that the U.S. must establish a clear regulatory framework through the legislation to maintain its competitive edge in innovation.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has fallen below $64,000. BTC is trading at $63,918.79 on the Binance USDT market.

Data from CME FedWatch indicates a 63.7% probability that the Federal Reserve will hold its benchmark interest rate steady at the July Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, with a 36.3% chance of a 25 basis point (0.25 p.p.) hike. Looking ahead to the September meeting, the probability of a rate hold is 26.1%, while the chance of a cumulative 25 bp hike stands at 52.2%.

Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has spoken favorably of Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh's approach to managing monetary policy. Goolsbee stated that Chairman Warsh is trying to reduce market speculation about the path of interest rates and scale back forward guidance. He added that he is in strong agreement with this approach.

Strategy CEO Phong Le announced that he has purchased $1 million worth of the company's perpetual preferred stock (STRC). He added that he plans to hold the shares until they reach their par value of $100.

Ophelia Snyder, co-founder of 21Shares, said that while tokenization solves real-world problems related to payment systems and asset movement, core financial infrastructure is not yet prepared for institutional-scale adoption. According to CoinDesk, she argued that although blockchain companies have largely addressed transaction throughput issues, they have not met the broader operational requirements of financial institutions. Snyder explained that the 24-hour trading of tokenized assets would require financial institutions to rethink their risk management frameworks. She also pointed out that many firms rely on third-party software providers whose systems are not adapted for blockchain-based transactions. Snyder believes that while these projects can work on a limited scale, they may struggle to handle the volume of U.S. capital markets, where she noted $1 billion is a trivial sum. She anticipates that the industry's biggest challenges will emerge as institutions move beyond pilot programs to full-scale business operations.

Jeff Walton, Chief Risk Officer (CRO) at Strive (ASST), has attributed the recent decline and subsequent rebound of the company's preferred stocks, STRC and SATA, to leverage liquidation and strong selling pressure rather than deteriorating credit quality. According to CoinDesk, on June 18, STRC fell to a low of $82.53 before bouncing back to around $90.50. Similarly, SATA's price dropped into the low $90s before recovering to approximately $98.59. Walton explained that the situation was more akin to a forced sale than a collapse in the DeFi market. He stated that holders selling the products triggered liquidations elsewhere in traditional financial markets and that he does not believe the issue originated from DeFi protocols. Walton added that such volatility is part of the maturation process for a new asset class.

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Monday to accelerate the development of advanced quantum computers and prepare for related security threats, The Wall Street Journal reported. The first order directs federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, to work with the private sector and academia to deploy a quantum computer for scientific research by 2028. This is seen as a key benchmark for demonstrating the technology's practical viability, as quantum computers can solve problems at speeds far exceeding traditional supercomputers. The second order requires government agencies and security experts to prepare for quantum systems, aiming to strengthen security frameworks to protect critical infrastructure from quantum hacking attacks that could break existing encryption systems faster than expected.

Federal Reserve Chairman Warsh is scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee at 2:00 p.m. UTC on July 14.

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders aimed at expanding the nation's quantum computing capabilities and accelerating the transition to encryption technology resistant to quantum attacks. According to Decrypt, the U.S. government aims to develop a scientifically significant quantum computer by 2028.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed mixed today. - S&P 500: -0.37% - Nasdaq: -1.32% - Dow Jones: +0.29%

Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform Securitize has filed a lawsuit against digital securities infrastructure firm tZERO in a U.S. federal court in Delaware, The Block reported. The suit follows tZERO's earlier claim that Securitize's DS Protocol and Vault Registra infringed on two of its patents related to self-executing security tokens and crypto integration infrastructure. In response, Securitize argued that tZERO's lawsuit is baseless and that its claims run counter to the spirit of fair competition in the industry.

Robinhood has announced the listing of spot GRAM.

Coinbase has announced via its official X account that it will support perpetual futures trading for MRVL and EWY, starting after 9:00 a.m. UTC on June 23.

Researchers formerly with the Ethereum Foundation have launched Ethlabs, a non-profit organization dedicated to Ethereum research and development, Wu Blockchain reported. The initiative has secured investment from Bitmine, Sharplinks, Joe Lubin, Anchorage, Octant, and SNZ. Ethlabs will focus on Ethereum protocol research, including payment efficiency, scalability, cross-chain interoperability, data availability, and protocol economics. The organization stated it will operate independently, with its leadership determining research priorities free from investor influence on its technical roadmap.

Concerns are growing over the Ethereum Foundation's management and direction following the announced resignation of Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang, CoinDesk reported. At least eight executives have now departed the foundation over the past five months. Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist commented that the talent drain reflects leadership flaws rather than ideological differences. He dismissed speculation that Wang's departure, which came shortly after the reveal of the new CROPS (Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, Security) strategic framework, was due to disagreement over the strategy. Feist asserted that those who left were actually proponents of CROPS and that the problem lies with the foundation's management, not its strategic direction. He warned that this situation would unfortunately have a very negative impact on Ethereum.

The Bank of England (BoE) has announced its final regulatory framework for stablecoins, easing some of its previously proposed restrictions, Decrypt reported. The central bank has scrapped a previously considered limit on individual stablecoin holdings. In its place, the BoE has introduced a temporary guardrail that caps the total issuance size per stablecoin at 40 billion pounds (approximately $53 billion). Additionally, reserve asset regulations have been relaxed. Issuers are now permitted to invest up to 70% of their reserves in interest-bearing government debt, such as short-term UK government bonds. This is an increase from the 60% previously proposed.

Decentralized lending protocol Goldfinch is facing a crisis due to loan defaults by its partner firms, Protos reported. According to the report, two of Goldfinch's eight lending firms have officially defaulted, and the remaining six have entered debt restructuring. Total losses exceed $18 million, with allegations that over $50 million is being improperly managed. Consequently, Goldfinch's GFI token has plummeted 99.8% from its January 2022 peak of $32.94 to under $0.07.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has launched an experiment to test claims that AI-based text analysis can undermine online anonymity. He announced on X that within the last 10 years, he wrote and published a significant document related to Ethereum under a pseudonym. Buterin has challenged the public to find the document, stating he is curious to see how easy or difficult the task will prove to be.

Coinbase has announced the listing of GEOD. Trading is scheduled to begin at 12:00 a.m. UTC today, provided liquidity conditions are met.

A coalition of U.S. crypto industry groups is urging Congress to pass a bill on mining and staking taxation in its original form, according to The Block. The proposed legislation clarifies that rewards from these activities should be taxed at the point of sale, not when they are created. The industry argues that the current practice of taxing rewards upon creation imposes excessive burdens and administrative uncertainty on taxpayers, asserting that it is more reasonable to tax assets when they are actually cashed out.

Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered U.S. crypto bank, has launched a deposit token platform, CoinDesk reported. The platform is designed to enable banks to offer 24/7 blockchain-based payment services without replacing their existing core banking systems. Deposit tokens represent customer funds as digital tokens on a blockchain, while the actual capital remains in traditional bank deposit accounts.

Bastian Aue (Aerugo), an operations team member at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), stated that Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) could become the next major front in the cypherpunk war, according to Wu Blockchain. He emphasized that the Ethereum Foundation holds censorship resistance, privacy, and self-sovereignty as its core values, adding that the foundation does not exist to maximize its appeal to short-term speculators or institutional investors.

According to on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant, Bitcoin's transaction frequency has reached its most active level since 2024. The firm noted that despite hedge funds reducing their BTC exposure, network activity is on the rise, creating a divergence between increasing transaction activity and sluggish price performance. CryptoQuant also highlighted that small-value daily transactions of under 0.01 BTC account for approximately 80% of this flow, indicating that while transaction frequency is high, the overall volume remains small.