Headline News: Bitcoin Braces For Tariff Uncertainties Ahead
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Bitcoin remained relatively stable last week, rising 0.81%, as market sentiment stayed optimistic ahead of Trump’s July 9 tariff deadline, with the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill and hopes pinned on potential trade agreements. Spot Bitcoin ETFs still kept a net positive inflow of approximately $770 million. Meanwhile, public companies acquired approximately $730 million BTC last week.
Macro-Outlook: Tariffs Uncertainty Ahead
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Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnick stated the July 9 tariffs will be taking effect on August 1 and President Trump is expected to send 12 or 15 letters to trading partners notifying them if no deal is reached before the deadline.
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The US announced a new trade deal with Vietnam, imposing 20% on Vietnamese goods and 40% on transshipped goods while American products enjoy zero-tariff. The US trade talks with the EU and India remain fluid, with the outcome likely to be determined in the final hours before the July 9 deadline.
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Elon Musk announced he has formed a new political party called the “America Party”, although there is lack of confirmation that the party has been formally registered with the US FEC. Musk also stated the new party will be embracing cryptocurrencies.
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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was passed by the House and signed into law by President Trump last Friday, introducing cuts to federal income tax on tips and overtime pay, tax relief for business, and many more. The Treasury General Account (TGA) is expected to be replenished as the debt limit has been raised for an additional $5 trillion.
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The US ISM manufacturing PMI increased to 49 in June, slightly above the market expectation of 48.8. ISM services PMI also increased to 50.8 in June, above the market expectation of 50.5.
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The JOLTs job openings increased to 7.769 million in May, higher than the market forecast of 7.3 million. However, the ADP employment declined by 33K in June, well below forecasts of an employment gain of 95K.
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Although the US non-farm payrolls increased to 147K in June, well above the market forecast of 110K, the jobs gain were mainly contributed by government education and healthcare sectors. The unemployment rate in June was 4.1%, below the market expectation of 4.3%, exhibiting low layoffs and slow hiring with participation rate dropped from 62.4% to 62.3%.
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The market reduced the probabilities of a rate cut in the July FOMC meeting from 18% to less than 5% and kept September rate cut at approximately 64%.
Upcoming Economic Calendar including,
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Thursday, July 10, 2:00am: June FOMC Minutes
Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: The First Solana-Staking Spot ETF and The New Tokenised Stocks Era
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REX-Osprey launched its Solana-staking spot ETF, SSK, on CBOE. The ETF debuted with $33 million trading volume and $12 million net inflow, which fell short of IBIT’s debut of over $1 billion and ETHA’s $240 million trading volume on the first day.
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The US SEC was reportedly working to develop a listing standard for digital asset ETFs, seamline the process to earliest 75 days.
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The US SEC commissioners paused the conversion of Grayscale’s Digital Large Cap Fund into ETF, despite the staff’s approval.
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Canary Capital filed for Canary Pengu ETF, proposing 80% to 90% allocation in PENGU and 5% to 15% in Pudgy Penguins NFTs.
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Senator Lummis introduced a new digital asset tax bill, which includes $300 de minimis tax exemption per transaction with a $5000 cap per year.
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Robinhood introduced Robinhood Chain, which is built on Arbitrum Orbit, to facilitate the future of asset ownership. Robinhood also announced to launch tokenised stocks, ETFs and private company stocks for EU users, ETH and SOL staking for US customers. Other announcements include perpetual trading, USDG integration, crypto cashback card, new mobile trading apps and more. Stock tokens’ metadata can already be seen on Arbitrum explorer.
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BackedFi’s xStocks is now live on Solana network with over 50 tokenised stocks available to trade. Bybit and Kraken have listed xStocks on their platforms as well. Chainlink is the official oracle provider for xStocks and xStocks plans to integrate Chainlink’s CCIP and Proof of Reserve soon. Gate crypto exchange also announced the launching of spot and perpetual trading of xStocks on its platform.
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Gemini has launched 20+ tokenised stocks on Gemini, partnering with Dinari.
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Sparkassen, German savings banks, announced planning to provide crypto services in summer of 2026.
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Deutsche Bank plans to provide digital asset custody services in 2026 and potentially expand services such as stablecoin.
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Japanese Minna Bank announced exploring various use cases including stablecoin issuance on Solana, RWA trading, cross-border payment with blockchain technology.
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Rostec, a Russian state-owned conglomerate, reportedly plans to launch RUBx ruble-stablecoin in 2025.
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JD.com and Ant Group reportedly urging the central bank to authorise yuan-based stablecoins in Hong Kong.
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JPMorgan blockchain subsidiary, Kinexys, is reportedly developing tokenised carbon credit with S&P Global, EcoRegistry and the International Carbon Registry.
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Approximately 80,000 BTC that stayed dormant for 14 years were consolidated and moved from legacy addresses (starting with “1”) to SegWit addresses (starting with “bc1q”).
Layer 1 and Layer 2s: EVM-driven updates
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Co-founder and CEO of Aptos is appointed by the US CFTC as a member of the Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee under the Global Markets Advisory Committee.
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TON announced application for a 10-year UAE Golden Visa with $100,000 staked TON (which can be unlocked after 3 years) and a one-time $35,000 processing fee. The traditional Golden Visa requires individuals to invest $540,000 in real estate or fixed deposit. CZ stated he would push BNB to obtain similar previllage for this use case. However, the UAE’s ICP, SCA, and VARA issued a joint statement denying this type of arrangement.
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Sonic introduced a new DAG-based consensus, SonicCS 2.0, that potentially doubles performance and reduces memory by 68%.
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Babylon announced integrating EVM to Babylon Genesis, enabling more DeFi to onboard into Babylon.
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Avail launched Nexus Beta, opening early access to developers. Nexus abstracts away manual bridging, chain and wallet switching, offering better cross-chain experience in a single app.
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Celo launched Eclair testnet, a high performance layer-2 network powered by OP Succinct Lite and EigenDA v2, enabling real-time confirmation and features such as fee abstraction.
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Katana mainnet is now live. It pioneers the concept of Chain-Own-Liquidity (COL) and redirects sequencer fees back to the core DeFi pools. The team allocated 10% of token supply to Sushi, Morpho and other DeFi protocols to booststrap liquidity.
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Innovative Pharmaceutical Biotech Limited entered MOU for potential acquisition of Conflux Assets.
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Batanix, a Bitcoin EVM-equivalent layer-2, launched its mainnet.
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Upbit’s parent company Dunamu announced a partnership with Naver Pay to promote KRW stablecoin. Naver Pay is a payment service developed by NAVER, the parent company of LINE Corporation.
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VeChain launched its new staking program, Stargate, with a 5.48 billion bonus VTHO to bootstrap the transition. The new NFT-based staking tiers include Dawn Node, Lighting Node and Flash Node to serve all stakeholders of all sizes.
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Mantle introduced MantleX, an AI research and incubation arm, to advance AI use cases in blockchain.
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Kadena launched Chainweb EVM testnet on EthCC. Kadena is a Chainweb-designed PoW blockchain, which runs multiple parallel chains with native cross chain communication.
Dapps: Huge updates from Jito and Virtuals
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Jito launched the TipRounter NCN, allowing validators to share priority fees with JitoSOL stakers.
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Chainlink introduced its Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), providing customisable compliance policy within smart contracts, identity managing, real-time monitoring and extensive reporting capabilities.
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PancakeSwap launched its v3 liquidity pool on Solana.
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VOOI, a perpetual trading aggregator, launched its V2, integrating Ostium and KiloEx for RWA trading, gasless trading, one-click execution, unified balance and more.
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Velodrome launched Superswaps, enabling users to swap assets across the Optimism Superchain on its platform.
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Lido’s dual governance is now live, granting stETH holders to delay contentious proposals and safely exit.
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Ondo Finance partnered with Pantera Capital to launch a $250 million Ondo Catalyst fund, supporting RWA protocols. Ondo also acquired Oasis Pro, a SEC-registered broker-dealer ATS and Transfer Agent.
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Grass launched a mobile application on Android, incentivising 3x Grass Points now.
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Resolv launched Resolv Vaults, enabling yield strategy deployment natively to earn additional yield. The first vault introduced was HyperUSD by Mizu Labs, integrating Hyperliquid EVM and earning multiple points from various ecosystem protocols.
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Dolomite announced to expand its money market service to Ethereum and offers the first USD1 support as collateral on Ethereum.
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Centrifuge partnered with S&P DJI to launch proof-of-index infrastructure, helping asset managers such as Janus Henderson to build a tokenised S&P500 index fund.
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Virtuals Protocol has launched the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) public Beta, serving as a messaging layer between AI agents to integrate external applications and communicate with other agents.
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Hyperliquid is now live on Mass mobile apps on iOS and Android.
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Infinex launched Alpha version of Infinex Connect, enabling users to connect to third-party apps seamlessly with Infinex account.
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Backpack experienced a bug that caused incorrect perpetual order placed and users’ fund losses. The team acknowledged the issue and pledged to full reimbursement affected users.
Upcoming Alpha and Governance: Big Crypto Regulatory Hearings Ahead
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The US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is set to hold a hearing to debate whether cryptocurrencies such as XRP should be considered as digital commodities under supervision of CFTC, on July 9. The US House has also designated the week of July 14, as “Crypto Week” to consider the CLARITY Act, Anti-CBDC Act, and GENIUS Act.
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The Q2 earning season is approaching with announcements from big banks next week and major technology companies from the fourth week of July.
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Virtuals Protocol is voting for 3 proposals involving the establishment of Virtuals Foundation, protocol-owned sniper defense which airdrops the sniped agent tokens to veVIRTUAL and 2% token supply allocation to the team each time if VIRTUAL token hits $10, $20 and $40.
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Kaito is expected to launch a “capital launchpad”, which exclusively offers token launches to yappers, in July.
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Fluid is expected to launch on Solana network in Q3 2025.
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Babylon released its roadmap, aiming to launch testnet for Bitcoin Multi-Staking and EVM in Q3 and mainnet in Q4.
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GammaSwap’s Yield Token, offering liquidity providers to earn trading fees while hedging against impermanent loss, is expected to launch soon.
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Aerodrome announced to launch Pool Launcher soon, enabling quick pool launching and earning 100% of the swap fees.
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Vitalik and Toni Wahrstätter proposed EIP-7983, introducing maximum gas usage to provide predictable transaction costs while remaining resilient against certain DoS vectors.
Token Unlock: Massive Unlock of CLOUD, ZRO, AVAIL
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IMX token unlocked on July 11, amount representing 1.31% of the token supply.
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IO token unlocked on July 11, amount representing 8.05% of the token supply.
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APT token unlocked on July 12, amount representing 1.75% of the token supply.
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STRK token unlocked on July 15, amount representing 3.81% of the token supply.
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ARB token unlocked on July 16, amount representing 1.87% of the token supply.
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VANA token unlocked on July 16, amount representing 1.47% of the token supply.
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DBR token unlocked on July 17, amount representing 20.3% of the token supply.
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SOLV token unlocked on July 17, amount representing 20% of the token supply.
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APE token unlocked on July 17, amount representing 1.92% of the token supply.
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CLOUD token unlocked on July 18, amount representing 69.7% of the token supply.
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ZK token unlocked on July 19, amount representing 2.42% of the token supply.
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MERL token unlocked on July 19, amount representing 4.98% of the token supply.
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ZRO token unlocked on July 20, amount representing 22.2% of the token supply.
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PLUME token unlocked on July 21, amount representing 4.26% of the token supply.
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AVAIL token unlocked on July 23, amount representing 38.3% of the token supply.
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