BTC Weakens Despite CLARITY Act Progress

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In Today's Note

• Risk assets de-risked into the weekend, with BTC falling to its lowest level since May 1, ETH briefly dropping below $2,100, US equities selling off, and Brent crude moving back above $110.
• Macro pressure remained the main drag, as inflation concerns, rising global bond yields, and the unresolved US–Iran conflict outweighed last week’s CLARITY Act progress.
• DeFi & TradFi updates cover ETF progress, Hyperliquid flows, a bridge exploit, and Bitcoin treasury accumulation, including BNB and TRON ETF filings, 21Shares’ Hyperliquid ETF inflows, the Verus Ethereum bridge exploit, and Capital B’s latest BTC purchase.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• Fears over rising inflation in the US, a continued move higher in global bond yields and a deadlock in the US-Iran war has coincided with a de-risking across both US equity markets last Friday and crypto asset spot prices over the past 72 hours. 

• BTC fell to $76,500, its lowest level since May 1, 2026, while ETH briefly dropped below $2,100 and Brent crude oil prices have settled back above $110 per barrel.
• Those downward moves in crypto prices occurred despite a major regulatory win last week, after the US Senate Banking Committee voted on advancing the landmark CLARITY Act towards the Senate. 

• President Trump warned on Truth Social yesterday that “the Clock is Ticking” for Iran to send a suitable proposal to the US to bring an end to the Middle East conflict. 
• According to Iranian news agency Fars, the US had set five main conditions for a peace deal, including the removal of uranium used by Iran’s nuclear program to the US; no US reparations to Tehran and the unfreezing of less than a quarter of Iran’s suspended assets. The US has yet to publicly comment on those stipulations however.
• President Trump told Axios News that “We want to make a deal” but Iran is “not where we want them to be. They will have to get there or they will be hit badly, and they don’t want that.”

• Shares of semiconductor firms and Big Tech firms, which had been responsible for much of the rally in benchmark equity indexes over the past two weeks, dropped sharply on Friday, dragging US stock indices lower. 
• The S&P 500 Index slid 1.24%, while the Nasdaq-100 closed 1.54% lower — both posting their worst day since late March. 

• The drop in US equities occurred alongside a selloff in global bonds which has seen bond yields soar higher. 
• The yield on 10-year US Treasuries currently trades close to 4.60%, its highest since May 2025, while 30-year US treasury yields have risen above 5.1% — their highest since late October 2023. 
• Meanwhile, government bond yields in Japan have also hit record highs. Japan’s 30-year debt hit 4% for the first time since their debut, while 10-year JGB yields are at their highest level since 1996.

• Following his summit with President Xi, President Trump said that his Chinese counterpart, President Xi, had agreed that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon — however Trump did not push on Xi to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
• Aboard Air Force One, Trump said, “He [Xi] said very strongly, they cannot have a nuclear weapon and he wants them to open up the strait … I think he will. I think automatically he’d like to see it opened up. I’m not asking for any favors, because when you ask for favors you have to do favors in return. We don’t need favors.”

• Beyond Iran, the two leaders discussed many other topics during their summit. For example, Trump said “We talked about possibly working together for guardrails” on AI as well as the sale of Nvidia chips in China. 
• In December last year, Trump agreed to allow Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chips to Chinese customers, a restriction initially in place to restrain China’s growth in AI, but Trump said China hasn’t approved purchases of the H200 chips “because they chose not to, they want to develop their own.”

• The two sides also agreed to establish boards on trade and investment. The boards will be designed to address mutual concerns over market access and agricultural products according to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. 
• Additionally, earlier today the White House said in a fact sheet that China has agreed to purchase at least $17B of agricultural products from the US annually through 2028. 
• However, despite speculation that the two leaders may announce an extension of the one-year trade truce they brokered during their last meeting in October, tariffs were not discussed in last week’s summit — “We didn’t discuss tariffs. They’re paying substantial tariffs, but we didn’t discuss”, Trump told reporters. 

DeFi & TradFi

• Updated SEC filings from VanEck and Grayscale show continued progress on their proposed U.S. spot BNB ETFs.
• VanEck filed Amendment No. 5 to its Form S-1 for the VanEck BNB ETF, which would list on Nasdaq under the ticker VBNB. 
• Grayscale filed Amendment No. 2 to its own registration statement on the same day, with its proposed Grayscale BNB ETF expected to trade under the ticker GBNB.
• Canary Capital is separately moving ahead with its staking TRON ETF application, adding to the latest round of crypto ETF filings under SEC review.

• 21Shares’ Hyperliquid ETF recorded its strongest session since launch on Thursday, with $8.1M in trading volume and roughly $4.9M in net inflows.
• The HYPE token later eased from its highs but remained up around 8% over the past 24 hours, trading near $43.63 on Friday morning.

• Verus, a privacy-focused blockchain using a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus model, has faced an exploit targeting its Ethereum bridge, the cross-chain infrastructure that allows assets to move between the Verus and Ethereum networks, with losses reaching roughly $11.6M according to Blockaid and PeckShield.
• Blockchain security firms said the attacker drained 103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH, and 147,000 USDC before swapping the assets into roughly 5,402 ETH, while the attacker’s wallet was reportedly seeded with 1 ETH through Tornado Cash prior to the exploit.
• Security researchers at GoPlus said the exploit may involve forged cross-chain message validation, a withdrawal logic bypass, or an access control vulnerability, while the Verus team confirmed that parts of the network halted after block-producing nodes voluntarily took themselves offline during the incident response process.

• Capital B (Euronext Growth Paris: ALCPB, OTC: CPTLF), which brands itself as Europe’s first “Bitcoin Treasury Company,” confirmed the acquisition of 192 BTC for €13M, bringing total holdings to 3,135 BTC acquired at an average price of €90,451 per bitcoin and a total acquisition value of €283.6M.
• The purchases were funded through multiple capital raises, including a €15.2M private placement backed by institutional investors Adam Back and TOBAM, alongside an additional €1.1M warrant financing and €0.85 million raised through an ATM-style equity issuance program.
  

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