The Weekly Wrap: CLARITY Act News, Middle East Escalations & Tech Earnings

Listen to the Weekly Wrap on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It is a summary with the help of AI-voices. 

This Week’s Top Stories

“$900 million FTX Distribution starting on July 31.” – Friday, 17 July 2026 

• Last Friday, FTX announced that they will begin the fifth creditor distribution next week, July 31. They will be paying approximately $900 million to holders who completed the required pre-distribution steps by June this year.
• Eligible creditors are expected to receive the funds through their selected distribution provider within a couple of business days after July 31.
• This is the fifth round of creditor distributions. The four previous rounds, with the first one starting in early 2025 and the last one in March 2026, have already paid out roughly $10 billion to creditors, and additional tranches will depend on the ongoing reconciliation of remaining disputed claims reserves and further asset liquidation.

“Clarity Act odds spiked above 50 Percent on Tuesday, now back at 37 Percent.” – This week 

• At the beginning of the week, news started circulating that President Donald Trump had agreed to an ethics provision in the CLARITY Act, removing the final major hurdle to advancing the crypto market structure bill toward a Senate vote. The provision would prohibit presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress and other federal officials from profiting from digital assets while in office.
• The news likely led to the spike in odds on Polymarket and Kalshi, as many traders believed this ethics provision could convince Democrats to vote for the bill alongside the Republicans. But on Wednesday, Eleanor Terrett posted on X that the ethics package was actually negotiated between the White House and GOP senators Lummis and Moreno and does not yet have the signoff from Democrats, which led to the decrease in odds to the levels before the announcement.

“Oil prices spike amid renewed escalation in the Middle East.” – This week 

• This week, the U.S. continues to strike Iran, while Tehran launches widening attacks on U.S. allies in the region. Jordan and Kuwait reported incoming Iranian fire on Thursday. The UK warned against all but essential travel to Kuwait and Bahrain.
• President Trump posted on his social media that the U.S. would hold Iran responsible for any future attacks by the Houthis in the Strait of Hormuz, warning of “major military punishment” if the group targets ships again.
• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned this week that the situation in the Middle East is getting out of control and urged participants to take a step back.
• Oil has topped $100 a barrel for the first time since May, as the widening conflict threatens a further squeeze on global supplies.

“Even this week’s positive earnings results can’t justify high valuations for many investors.” – This week 

• Second-quarter results from Alphabet and Tesla were due after the bell on Wednesday this week, as the first two of the so-called "Magnificent Seven" companies reported earnings for Q2. Many investors were likely hoping for additional evidence and support that these companies' multibillion-dollar investments in AI continue to pay off.
• Wall Street indexes closed lower on Thursday, with the Nasdaq sinking more than 2 percent as the earnings did not manage to satisfy or get rid of these concerns about overly heavy AI spending.
• Of course, the rapidly rising oil prices this week did not help the stock indices, but there was certainly a lack of enthusiasm after this week’s earnings, as the earnings numbers in aggregate are not bad, but many companies have had a story that's caused their stock to fall. It does not take much for stocks to get sold off currently.
• Shares of Google's parent, Alphabet, sank 7 percent, making it the second-biggest drag on the benchmark index after it reported higher spending plans while it also burned cash. Tesla shares tumbled 14.5 percent after it reported negative free cash flow in the second quarter for the first time in more than two years.

Bitcoin is up more than 10 Percent against gold and the S&P this month 

This week once again started strong, with Bitcoin increasing more than 4 percent starting early morning, trading up to almost $67K after a quiet weekend. But starting Tuesday afternoon, BTC started to trade downwards again, repeating a pattern we observed over the past couple of weeks: a strong trading day on Monday and prices getting sold off during the week but making up some ground during Thursday night and Friday morning. 

PUMP, ONDO, UNI and ENA are among the winners this week, all up more than 10 percent, while ATOM, ZEC and CC are down around 5 percent over the past seven days. 

There were many people starting to get optimistic again about Ethereum, but looking at the ETHBTC pair, we can see that it is currently flat on the week, but was once up 2 percent, with Ethereum currently trading just below $1.9K. 

Bitcoin is up more than 10 percent against both gold and the S&P 500 this month, as gold is still trying to recover from a multi-month corrective phase and stock market investors seem to be starting to look for alternative investments at the moment, as many are worried about an overheated AI rally.

Is the 4-year-cycle in the room with us? 

The 4-year cycle has been the talk of the town for a couple of months now as everyone and their grandmother seem to currently be wondering whether we will indeed be repeating the infamous halving cycle and bottom in October this year. Looking at data from Google Trends, we observed that the search volumes for multiple terms related to the 4-year cycle have hit their all-time highs over the recent weeks, as we can see in the chart below for “4 year cycle” and “4 year bitcoin cycle”. The question now is whether the current mainstream interest in this topic is a fade or whether it will actually reinforce the power of it.  

Looking at the past couple of years, an idea that is accepted and believed to be true by the majority of market participants is generally something you want to fade as the majority tends to be wrong and on the losing side of the trade. It seems that currently many market participants expect crypto to trade lower into fall and bottom in October, pretty much repeating the 4-year cycle. The question is, what are the alternatives? Could the bottom already be in or will the bear market phase last even longer? Only time will tell, but there are multiple bottom signs starting to flag already, such as daily relative strength readings reaching levels comparable to the March 2020 COVID crash during both the February capitulation and the early June retest of support. The only lower readings in Bitcoin’s history occurred during the 2018 bear market.

HIP-4, Gram wallet & Solana’s REV falls 43 percent in Q2 

This week, Hyperliquid outlined the next stage of its expansion into prediction markets, as permissionless deployment under HIP-4 is expected to launch on testnet in a future upgrade, allowing external deployers to create their own Outcome Markets. 

Just as with HIP-3, market deployers will be required to stake 500K HYPE, which validators may slash if a market is defined ambiguously or settled incorrectly. Validators will approve standardized market templates, while deployers will be able to retain up to 50 percent of the trading fees generated by their markets. Hyperliquid views this as an important long-term growth opportunity, arguing that the number of potentially tradable events is significantly larger than the universe of assets available in spot and perpetual markets. 

In the world of prediction markets, a report from DeFi Oasis outlines that nearly 130K of more than 194K unique addresses trading Polymarket’s World Cup winner market lost money, representing almost 67 percent of all participating traders. Most lost less than $100, while 43 addresses lost more than $100K each, totaling over $15 million. Profits were similarly concentrated, with 54 addresses earning more than $100K each and collectively making over $22 million. This distribution demonstrates that while prediction markets attract broad participation, likely also from non-crypto-native mainstream participants, the largest gains and losses remain concentrated among a very small group of large traders. 

In other news, Telegram founder Pavel Durov communicated plans to launch a large-scale rollout of native non-custodial Gram wallets across every Telegram app this summer, enabling instant, zero-fee crypto transactions for more than 1 billion users. If successfully implemented, the wallet could significantly reduce onboarding friction by allowing users to access and transfer crypto directly through an application they already use. 

Blockworks published their Solana Q2 token holder report, presenting a very mixed picture. Tokenized asset volume reached a record $5.8 billion, increasing 114 percent QoQ, with tokenized equities accounting for $4.8 billion. Institutional demand also remained resilient, as SOL spot exchange-traded products attracted $120 million in net inflows. However, the decline in speculative activity, particularly in the memecoin sector, continued to weigh on revenues. Solana’s Real Economic Value fell 43 percent QoQ to $51 million, while application revenue declined 31 percent to $228.4 million. Overall, the figures suggest that institutional adoption and tokenized asset activity are expanding even as the memecoin-driven revenue cycle continues to cool.

Spot ETF Inflows & Regulatory News from Japan, Russia and Nigeria 

Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs started the week with strong inflows, with the BTC products attracting more than $400 million on Monday and Tuesday together, while the ETH spot ETFs managed to attract more than $150 million this week so far. The Bitcoin spot ETFs currently sit on $75 million in net inflows this week, as yesterday was accompanied by $225 million net outflows. 

Last week, the flows for the BTC spot ETFs were roughly flat, with a very negative start to the week on Monday, but a recovery and strong finish on Friday. The flows for Ethereum and Solana were comparatively small but steady and Hyperliquid experienced a couple of days with net outflows. 

Strategy continued to sell MSTR shares this week for $263.5 million in net proceeds. The company made no bitcoin purchases during the week, leaving its holdings unchanged at 843’775 BTC, while its U.S. dollar reserve increased to $3.225 billion. BitMine, on the other hand, once again acquired 7’430 ETH last week. 

There were several news items in terms of regulatory developments around the world. Firstly, Russia's State Duma passed a landmark crypto bill on Tuesday that brings digital asset trading under government oversight while opening the market to retail investors. The legislation primarily establishes rules for crypto exchanges, custodians and brokers, which will need to join a special registry to operate legally. Existing exchanges will be given a roughly one-year grace period before their registration needs to be completed. 

Under the new rules, everyday retail investors are allowed to purchase the most liquid cryptocurrencies through intermediaries after passing a knowledge test. The rules also put buying limits in place. Retail investors are only allowed to invest up to 300K rubles, roughly $3.9K, per year through each intermediary. 

Secondly, in Japan, the parliament has passed legislation bringing cryptocurrencies under the same regulatory framework as stocks. In the end, with regulation as financial assets, cryptocurrency assets will be subject to stricter rules, for instance those governing insider trading, and the law amendment will mean stricter penalties for unregistered trading. The change in treatment is expected to come into effect within a year. Additionally, Japan is poised to introduce its first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund as early as 2028, as the Financial Services Agency prepares to revise investment-fund rules following the above-mentioned legislation that brings crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

AAII Members switch bearish 

As we predicted last week, AAII members switched bearish this week, but we did not expect them to change their stance this dramatically. The share of bullish members dropped below 30 percent for the first time since September last year. 

The crypto fear and greed index continues to stay in fearful territory at 28, with the stock market also in fear at 39.

• OKX announced that former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has joined its board of directors. – Link
• Movement labs files for chapter 11 bankruptcy with liabilities above $1 Million. – Link
• BitMEX said it will permanently close its exchange on September 23 and has stopped accepting new user registrations. – Link
• Only 7.1% of tokens launched since 2024 are still in profit. – Link
• Only 2.2% of U.S. Households Pay for AI. – Link
• Jack Mallers leaves Twenty One as Strike exits Tether's three-way bitcoin merger. – Link
• Truth Social will begin selling Wall Street firms real-time API access to President Trump's market-moving posts starting August 1. – Link

Interest Rate Decision & Tech Earnings 

Next week, we are looking forward to the FOMC meeting and Fed interest rate decision on Thursday, the BoJ interest rate decision on Friday and multiple earnings on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon and UBS are among the companies reporting their earnings for the second quarter. 

In terms of price action, not much has changed since last week, with Bitcoin trading around $65K at the time of writing, roughly flat on the week. The S&P 500 has been trading sideways for almost three months now and the bearish switch of the AAII members shows that many investors are starting to lose patience. 

When it comes to the interest rate decision, 70.6 percent of traders expect the Fed to hold rates steady next week, while 29.4 percent expect a rate hike. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 28 July 2026 

USA – CB Consumer Confidence 

Wednesday, 29 July 2026 

USA – Crude Oil Inventories 

USA – Fed Interest Rate Decision, FOMC Statement 

Thursday, 30 July 2026 

Eurozone – GDP, Unemployment Rate 

Great Britain – Interest Rate Decision 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims, PCE Price Index, Core PCE Price Index, GDP 

Friday, 31 July 2026 

Japan – CPI 

Japan – BoJ Interest Rate Decision, BoJ Press Conference 

China – Manufacturing PMI 

Switzerland – Retail Sales 

Eurozone – Core CPI, CPI