CLARITY Act Stalls in the Senate: Galaxy Digital’s research says odds of the U.S. CLARITY Act passing in 2026 have fallen to 10% as Senate negotiations drag on, while the SEC and CFTC keep pushing agency-level moves that could shape crypto rules even without Congress. White House Push for Crypto + Prediction Markets: The White House is set to host crypto and prediction-market executives on Aug. 19, with a CFTC meeting following the next day—another sign regulation is shifting into executive-agency channels. SEC Tokenization Momentum, Then More Delays: The SEC canceled a planned crypto rules meeting tied to tokenized offerings, and tokenization-linked stocks slid as uncertainty grows around the SEC’s “innovation exemption.” Stablecoins Go Mainstream Infrastructure: Mastercard’s $1.8B BVNK deal signals stablecoins are moving from experiments to payments rails, while Chime explores stablecoin wallet features and Tether touts a major audit milestone. Ripple Security + XRP Ledger Reliability: Ripple’s Sherlock audit contest found 96 XRP Ledger vulnerabilities before mainnet, including critical bugs that could have enabled account-draining attacks. Institutional Bitcoin Appetite: Edelman Financial and Tudor Investment disclosed meaningful spot Bitcoin ETF holdings, and Abu Dhabi sovereign funds reported large Bitcoin ETF positions. Privacy Reality Check: A new explainer argues Monero transactions are hard to trace on-chain, but users and activity can still be identified through surrounding data. Tech + Tokenization in the Real World: Solana processed $23M in WSOP payments and tokenized equities activity keeps expanding, while BNB Chain schedules its Pasteur hard fork for Aug. 25.