The Big Beautiful Bill Passes: Late Monday, the U.S. Senate passed President Trump's signature legislative package known as the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, delivering tax cuts while boosting defense spending and slashing social programs. The House followed suit Thursday, and Trump signed it into law Friday. The bill's projected multi-trillion-dollar deficit impact and healthcare coverage cuts have sparked fierce debate.
The crypto industry's hopes were dashed when the final version excluded key tax provisions. The sector had lobbied for changes to airdrop taxation, making staking and mining rewards taxable only upon sale rather than receipt, and creating de minimis exceptions to simplify small crypto transactions. While the bill does not directly impact crypto markets, its macroeconomic effects—detailed in our Behind the Charts section—will impact the market.
Circle Aims for National Trust Bank Status: Circle, issuer of the second-largest stablecoin USDC and recent U.S. public listing, filed for a national bank charter. Days later, Ripple—the company behind XRP—followed suit. Only Anchorage Digital currently holds such a license among crypto firms. The charter enables traditional banking products while offering clients enhanced regulatory certainty and security.
These moves signal crypto's steady integration into traditional finance. As crypto-native firms expand into banking territory, we expect traditional financial institutions to accelerate their digital asset strategies in response.
Robinhood Launches Ethereum Layer 2 and Tokenized Stocks: At EthCC, Ethereum's premier technology conference, U.S. retail brokerage giant Robinhood shared its intention to launch an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on Arbitrum's technology stack. The network inherits Ethereum's security and decentralization while offering its own blockchain environment.
Robinhood also launched tokenized stocks for EU clients, issuing publicly-listed securities onchain. The firm offered giveaways of tokenized shares in private companies SpaceX and OpenAI. However, OpenAI quickly clarified these tokens do not represent actual equity, do not have the company's endorsement, and any legitimate OpenAI equity transfer requires explicit approval—which was not granted by the firm.
While increased activity on public blockchains and real-world asset tokenization is encouraging, the OpenAI incident highlights regulatory gaps. Some investors mistakenly believed they held direct OpenAI equity, prompting the company's swift clarification.
