Markets Climb Even as Brent Nears $95 and Treasury Yields Hit Two-Month Highs

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In Today's Note

• US equities and digital assets both advanced despite a hostile macro backdrop, with Brent up 20% in July to just short of $95 as US airstrikes on Iran widened, and US 10- and 30-year yields sitting at two-month highs. Supporting sentiment, Treasury Secretary Bessent said lawmakers are at the "1-yard line" on the CLARITY Act, and spot Bitcoin ETFs bought $203.2M in a sixth straight day of inflows.
• Telegram plans to roll out a native, non-custodial GRAM wallet to its roughly 1B users this summer, which CEO Pavel Durov called the largest such rollout in history. Russia's State Duma passed a regulated crypto trading framework, Coinbase blamed a configuration update for a 50-minute outage, and Satsuma shareholders voted to liquidate the company's 668 BTC treasury.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• Risk sentiment prevailed across both Wall Street and crypto markets in the past 24 hours as US equities and chipmakers rebounded after last week’s selloff.
• A number of big-name AI firms rallied double digits, including SanDisk Corp which ended Tuesday’s session up 14.27% and Micron Technology Inc which rose 12.17%.
• That helped drive the Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector index up 5.21%, while all three major US benchmark stock indices, the Nasdaq-100, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones, all closed in the green.
• In crypto markets, BTC rallied to almost $67,000, while ETH climbed towards $1,950.
• Sentiment in digital assets was further supported by comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that lawmakers were at the “1-yard line” on the highly-anticipated CLARITY Act.
• That comes after reports on Monday that President Trump agreed to the ethics language provision included within the Act which is designed to limit how presidents and other federal officials can profit from digital assets, such as barring them from offering or issuing digital assets. This was one of the key sticking points by Democrats in the Senate causing the holdup in the Act getting passed.
• Since the beginning of the week, odds on the market titled “Clarity Act signed into law in 2026?” on Polymarket shot up from 31% to a high of 53% yesterday.
• Shares of crypto-related equities all moved higher in yesterday’s trading also: Coinbase Global Inc. ended the day up 9.61%, Robinhood Markets Inc rose 7.13% and shares of Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. finished 4.22% higher.
• So far in the month of July, BTC has risen close to 13%, while exchange-traded funds that hold spot Bitcoin have begun to reverse the outflow trend that characterised most of May and June.
• Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen six consecutive days of inflows with the products buying $203.2M worth of Bitcoin yesterday.
• The moves higher in risk-on assets occurred despite a backdrop of both higher oil prices and elevated government bond yields (US ten and thirty-year yields are both trading around two-month highs).
• The US military widened the scope of its airstrikes on Iran overnight attacking a military site near the north-western city of Tabriz, which Iranian media claimed was the first time the area was struck since hostilities between the two sides worsened two weeks ago.
• Iran’s Interior Minister visited mediator nation Pakistan on Tuesday, though no signs of deescalation were apparent.
• The US has maintained it will continue scaling its attacks on Iran until it agrees to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
• Speaking at the White House yesterday, President Trump said, “They want to desperately meet and until they’re ready to meet in a meaningful way we have no interest” in talks.
• Iranian news agency, Mehr, reported that the interior ministry in Tehran said an “exchange of messages” with the US is possible, but for now there are no such negotiations underway yet.
• As such, oil prices have continued to tick higher, with Brent crude trading just short of $95 per barrel currently, and up 20% in July so far.
• When asked about the threat of Iranian-backed Houthis attacking shipping that passes via the Red Sea, Trump warned "If something like that happens, we take care of it," though did not elaborate any further.

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto

• Telegram plans to roll out a native, non-custodial GRAM wallet to its roughly 1B users this summer, according to CEO Pavel Durov.
• Durov said the wallet will support instant, zero-fee crypto transactions, calling it the “largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history”.
• Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has established a dedicated cryptocurrency investigation unit to investigate digital asset-related crimes, including money laundering and terrorism financing, according to Dawn News.
• The unit will work alongside the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), the country's crypto regulator, as Pakistan continues to expand its digital asset framework following the passage of the Virtual Assets Act earlier this year.
• Russia's State Duma passed legislation establishing a regulated framework for cryptocurrency trading, allowing retail investors to buy approved digital assets through registered intermediaries after passing a knowledge test.
• The bill retains Russia's ban on using crypto for domestic payments but continues to permit its use for certain international trade settlements, and must still be approved by the Federation Council and signed by President Vladimir Putin before becoming law.
• Coinbase said a routine, “low-risk” configuration update caused an unintended network misconfiguration, triggering a roughly 50-minute outage on July 14.
• Trading, deposits and withdrawals, Coinbase Card transactions, onchain swaps and some institutional services were disrupted while internal workflows were temporarily unable to process transactions.
• The exchange said user funds were never at risk, and transactions left in progress were completed after services were restored.
• Satsuma Technology shareholders voted to liquidate the company's 668 BTC treasury, return capital to investors and delist the company from the London Stock Exchange, with more than 90% voting in favor.
• The decision comes less than a year after Satsuma raised £163.6M ($218M) to pursue a bitcoin treasury strategy. The company had previously sold 579 BTC to repay noteholders who chose not to convert their debt into shares.
• Bitget plans to enter the U.S. market regardless of whether Congress passes the Clarity Act, with CEO Gracy Chen leading efforts to establish an independent entity and secure the required money-transmitter, derivatives and broker-dealer approvals.
• Chen said the legislation could make the licensing process clearer, but growing uncertainty over its passage will not change the exchange’s expansion plans.
• Galaxy Digital launched the Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, committing up to $5M in developer grants to support post-quantum cryptography research and tools aimed at protecting Bitcoin from future quantum computing threats.
• The initiative also includes a dedicated Galaxy Research program and a Quantum Advisory Council of experts in quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography to guide research and evaluate grant proposals.
• Galaxy said it is inviting other industry participants to help fund grants and contribute research, citing the need to prepare Bitcoin well before quantum computers become capable of breaking its current cryptography.
• TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence firm, said HTX has been rotating wallets across TRON, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Solana every few hours since being sanctioned by the UK in May, making traditional address-based sanctions screening less effective.
• The UK sanctioned HTX in May over its alleged role in facilitating Russian sanctions evasion, though the exchange has remained operational.
• HTX said the wallet rotations are routine security practices common across the industry and rejected any suggestion they were intended to evade sanctions screening.

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