Hi! In today’s edition:
🏛️ The Clarity Act will survive the recess, but the votes remain in doubt
🕵️ The Times followed one of World Liberty's biggest checks somewhere uncomfortable
📉 Trump Media is taking sharp turn away from the crypto business
⚡A Bitcoin payment server has a rough weekend
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by 1inch!
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Clarity Act Lives, but the Odds Remain Slim
Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the Clarity Act at around 4:52 a.m. ET Saturday, in the closing minutes of an overnight session before the August recess. The Senate returns Sept. 14 and votes on the motion at 2:15 p.m. ET the following day, according to Crypto In America host Eleanor Terrett.
Sticking points that kept Clarity off the floor, such as ethics, illicit finance and how the Senate Agriculture text folds in, have not been resolved.
Invoking cloture takes 60 votes, and Republicans hold 53 seats. But not all Republicans are onboard. Sen. Josh Hawley, for example, says he is a no until bank deposit flight concerns are addressed.
Galaxy Research cut its odds of the bill becoming law this year to 30% last month. Polymarket most recently put the odds at 21%.
World Liberty's $100 Million Buyer Has a Past
The businessman behind Aqua 1's $100 million purchase of World Liberty Financial governance tokens was arrested in Britain in 2021 on suspicion of money laundering, The New York Times reported Sunday. Guren "Bobby" Zhou has not been charged, and British officials told the paper the investigation was still active as of late July.
A court record filed last November accused Zhou of taking part in a laundering operation dating to 2019 alongside five others. Two of his longtime employees were charged last September, one has pleaded guilty, and trial is set for 2028.
The Times could not determine where the $100 million came from. Under World Liberty's revenue split, as much as $75 million of it went to a company controlled by Trump and his sons.
Trump Media Backs Out of Its Crypto Bet
Trump Media, Crypto.com and SPAC Yorkville Acquisition Corp. mutually terminated their plan to launch Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, the $6.42 billion vehicle that was going to become the largest public holder of CRO. The three cited market conditions and shifting priorities in a Friday statement. A related deal for Crypto.com to service Yorkville's ETFs is off too.
Interim CEO Kevin McGurn told Axios the digital asset treasury market got saturated and that staking matters less to Crypto.com now. He is refocusing the company on media, data licensing and a pending merger with fusion energy firm TAE.
Trump Media is also dropping plans to build prediction markets into Truth Social, opting for a marketing deal instead. CRO is down over 11% since.
BTCPay Confirms Lightning Nodes Were Drained
BTCPay Server confirmed that attackers exploited a critical flaw in its bitcoin payment software and stole funds, and told operators running LND to upgrade to version 2.4.2 immediately or take their servers offline. The bug let an unauthenticated remote attacker grab credential files, which are enough to control an LND node and move its money.
Hardware wallet maker Foundation said its Lightning node was drained overnight, with channels closed and funds swept. Bitcoin publication Citadel21 reported the same.
The project has since narrowed the scope: on-chain wallets generated inside BTCPay are not affected. The flaw was reported by members of the Bitcoin Red Team, the group that started pointing AI models at bitcoin codebases last week.
🚨 DON’T MISS BITS + BIPS TODAY 🚨
The US economy lost 23,000 jobs in July against forecasts for a gain of 80,000, and the two prior months were revised down by 103,000. That lands ten days after three Fed officials dissented in favor of a rate hike. Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia and Chris Perkins break down what Wednesday's CPI does to a Fed split three ways.
Today, Monday, 4:30pm ET.
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📈 Spot bitcoin and ether ETFs drew $1.1 billion last week, the best week for either category since April, with BlackRock's IBIT taking $693.7 million of the $853.5 million that went into bitcoin funds. Bloomberg Intelligence's Eric Balchunas noted several funds have logged inflows every day since the Coldcard hack, making it "hard not to see causation in the correlation," though ether ETFs also posted their best week since April despite having no exposure to a Bitcoin-only wallet flaw.
⚖️ Bybit sued North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau and the Lazarus Group in Washington, D.C. federal court over the $1.5 billion theft from the exchange in February 2025, and secured a preliminary injunction freezing identified stolen assets held by unnamed defendants. Bybit says about $48.4 million has been recovered and roughly $30.5 million more is frozen across more than 28 exchanges and custodians.
⛏️ BIP-110 supporters split onto a minority chain at block 961,632 on Saturday, then managed just two blocks in about eight hours while the main bitcoin chain has added 232. Only 2.53% of blocks signaled for the proposal, which would temporarily bar non-financial data from bitcoin transactions, against the 55% needed to activate without a split.
⚖️ The CFTC warned regulated venues that showing prices in the American, or moneyline, odds format used by casino bookmakers is likely to mislead traders and risks violating the federal ban on manipulative devices.
🏛️ The Treasury Department sanctioned two Iranian exchanges, Shelbit Exchange and Aban Tether, plus alleged front-company operator Siavash Kayvanpour, accusing the network of laundering funds for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. OFAC said IRGC addresses sent more than $1 million to Shelbit and that Kayvanpour-controlled wallets moved over $2 million to already-designated Nobitex.
🇧🇷 Brazil's central bank will require 24-hour holds on customer crypto transfers to foreign platforms and self-custody wallets, under a resolution published Friday that takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. The hold covers transfers above the equivalent of $10,000, single or cumulative in a day, plus smaller ones an exchange flags as risky.
🔒 Microsoft Threat Intelligence found compromised websites pulling malware instructions from a BNB Smart Chain contract, a technique called EtherHiding that resists takedowns because only the deploying wallet can alter the payload. Visitors are shown a fake CAPTCHA telling them to paste an attacker-supplied command into the Windows Run dialog.
🇷🇺 Russia's FSB detained more than 20 staff of unregistered crypto exchange offices in Moscow City, alleging they helped Ukrainian call centers launder money scammed from Russians, including pensioners. The agency said it shut nine channels used to move funds abroad but named no exchanges, tokens or amounts, and published no evidence for the Ukraine link.
💸 Dow Protocol raised $10.5 million in a seed round backed by MH Ventures, Mapleblock, Animoca Brands, Arcane Group, HSKChain, Essentia Partners and Quartet Group. The protocol fronts working capital to e-commerce merchants against pending platform receivables, which normally take 14 to 28 days to clear, and pulls repayment automatically from merchants' platform balances.
Abbas Khan: Crypto Is Not Sexy Anymore
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