CLARITY Act Hits Summer Deadline, CFTC-SEC Open Swap Review, Base Ships Beryl

Crypto News

The United States is entering a decisive stretch for comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation, with the CLARITY Act facing a narrow window to advance this summer. The House passed its version 294-134 in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee has signaled bipartisan backing. The bill would divide oversight between the SEC and CFTC, define digital commodities, and introduce an Ancillary Asset concept that lets sufficiently decentralized networks shed securities treatment. It also strengthens self-custody and developer protections relevant to altcoin projects and algorithmic stablecoins. Lawmakers warn that missing this window could push meaningful action toward 2030 as midterm and presidential election cycles dominate the legislative calendar.

In Japan, COINHUB has signed an agreement with JR West SC Development to install western Japan's first crypto ATM at the Tennoji Mio commercial complex in Osaka. The company's official announcement, dated June 18, describes a bidirectional terminal that supports cash purchases of digital assets and cash withdrawals from asset sales, positioned on the second floor of a building directly connected to JR Tennoji Station. COINHUB, which filed as Japan's first registered crypto ATM operator with the Financial Services Agency in September 2025, aims to build a nationwide network of roughly 3,000 machines across transit hubs, retail centers, and tourist areas.

A tracking study of Hong Kong retail crypto investors offers a rare behavioral map of the market. Commissioned by the Investor and Financial Education Council and conducted with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the survey of 1,000 investors between November and December 2025 identified four behavior types. The largest, a follow-the-crowd and loss-holding group, made up 33.9%, skewing toward ages 18 to 29 with the highest female share at 43%. Irrational trading has eased since Hong Kong's 2023 platform regulation, yet anchoring bias scored highest at 3.86, with FOMO and reliance on influencers and AI trading bot signals still elevated.

Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network backed by Coinbase, will deploy its second upgrade, Beryl, to mainnet on June 25 after testnet operation. The upgrade introduces a native B20 token standard that stays ERC-20 compatible while running as precompiled chain-level code written in Rust, shortens standard withdrawals to Ethereum from seven days to five, and adopts the Reth V2 execution client to cut disk usage and raise throughput. Arriving just four weeks after the Azul upgrade, Beryl underscores a faster release cadence for an ecosystem hosting DeFi venues such as Aerodrome Finance and modular tooling akin to AltLayer. A third upgrade, Cobalt, is slated for September.

US derivatives regulators are moving to clarify long-standing definitional gaps. On June 18 the CFTC and SEC opened a joint request for public comment on how swaps, security-based swaps, and mixed swaps are defined, alongside emerging products such as perpetual futures and event contracts on prediction-market platforms. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig framed the effort as a chance to address ambiguities left in Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act, while SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said clearer lines would let registered firms and new entrants compete on equal footing. The comment window runs 60 days from publication in the Federal Register.

The joint review lands as the CFTC faces a legal challenge over perpetual futures. CME Group has sued the agency, contesting its decision to approve Kalshi's US perpetual futures trading as futures contracts. According to the complaint, the CFTC effectively rewrote the statutory definition of a swap when it cleared the product, sidestepping the regulatory framework that should apply. Perpetual futures are derivatives without an expiry date and have traded heavily on offshore venues, but their US standing remains contested. The dispute sharpens the stakes of the joint comment process, since the outcome could determine which agency governs a fast-growing class of contracts.

Taken together, these developments trace a single arc: crypto is being absorbed into formal financial infrastructure, from US statute and derivatives oversight to Japanese cash on-ramps and behavioral research. COINOTAG's aggregate market data frames the backdrop as cautious. Our Fear and Greed Index sits at 20 out of 100, in Extreme Fear, while Bitcoin dominance holds near 70% and total crypto market capitalization stands around $1.85 trillion, with Bitcoin trading near $64,000. Regulatory clarity and maturing rails tend to support the larger, more liquid assets first. Until the CLARITY Act and the CFTC-SEC review resolve, structural uncertainty is likely to keep broad risk appetite subdued.