Weekly Recap — 28 Jul–3 Aug 2026

The week opened with legislative optimism and closed with a hardware wallet crisis still unfolding. Two threads dominated: the Clarity Act's slow erosion from calendar certainty to a coin-flip before recess, and the Coldcard exploit, which moved from an initial report to nearly $90 million in confirmed losses and a behavioural shift in self-custody flows not seen since FTX. Around those poles, institutional infrastructure kept advancing quietly — DTCC settled real trades on-chain, Circle stacked a second regulatory charter, and Morgan Stanley brought staking ETPs to market — while macro pressure from a Fed dissent, yen intervention, and Iran-linked volatility reminded traders that crypto's correlation to global risk is selective but not gone.

1. Coldcard cold-wallet exploit: full story in the Lead.Losses reached $89 million across 4,500 addresses with the attack still active and no patch confirmed.2 Aug
2. Clarity Act hangs by a thread as Senate recess approaches.August recess deadline made this the last realistic window for a federal crypto market-structure law.31 Jul
3. DTCC runs live tokenised trades with Wall Street's major institutions.DTCC's first live on-chain settlement with major institutions moved post-trade infrastructure from pilot to production.3 Aug
4. Circle stacks a New York trust charter on top of its federal OCC approval.Circle's dual federal-and-state charter created the strongest US regulatory moat any stablecoin issuer holds.1 Aug
5. New York sues Kalshi for $36 billion, alleging the platform is an illegal gambling operation.A $36 billion state lawsuit set up a direct federal-versus-state collision over prediction market jurisdiction.1 Aug
6. A7A5, the Russia-backed ruble stablecoin, is effectively dead after coordinated sanctions enforcement.A96% transaction collapse showed coordinated blockchain analytics can functionally kill a non-custodial asset.30 Jul
7. US and Japan intervene jointly on the yen for the first time in 15 years.First joint US-Japan yen intervention in 15 years introduced macro conditions that historically unwind leveraged risk positions.3 Aug
8. Tether Q2 profit lands at $1.5 billion as reserve buffer shrinks sharply.Tether's reserve buffer shrank by over $4 billion in a single quarter, renewing stress-scenario questions about USDT.1 Aug