US Senator Cynthia Lummis submitted a draft invoice on Thursday proposing to exempt sure crypto transactions from taxation and defer taxes on mining and staking rewards till the underlying tokens are bought.
“My laws ensures Individuals can take part within the digital economic system with out inadvertent tax violations,” said Lummis.
The senator’s draft invoice was printed three weeks after the Guiding and Establishing Nationwide Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, passed the Senate in a 68–30 vote on June 11, Cointelegraph reported.
The GENIUS Act may “legitimize” stablecoins for institutional members by setting clear collateralization requirements, cementing them as a “higher type of cash,” mentioned Andrei Grachev, managing companion at DWF Labs and Falcon Finance.
The growing US regulatory readability could allow extra traditional finance players to hunt out decentralized monetary providers, attributable to their disappointment with conventional banking providers, in line with Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov.
“Because of horrible banking experiences, we’ve seen a whole lot of finance coming into fintech, and fintech functions capable of seize a whole lot of market share,” Kulechov mentioned onstage at EthCC 2025.
Past decentralized finance (DeFi), the tokenization of real-world property is a “multi-trillion-dollar alternative” for the crypto sector to have interaction with conventional finance, added Kulechov.
Within the wider crypto house, Chainlink, a decentralized blockchain oracle community for crosschain communication, launched a new compliance framework geared toward unlocking over $100 trillion value of institutional capital for the crypto market.
“Chainlink ACE is the compliance and identification normal the tokenized asset economic system has been ready for, with at this time’s launch offering a last essential constructing block for over $100 trillion in institutional capital to maneuver onchain,” mentioned Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis drafts standalone crypto tax invoice
US Senator Cynthia Lummis submitted a draft invoice on Thursday, outlining a number of provisions to overtake the tax code and exempt sure digital asset transactions from taxation after crypto amendments failed to seem within the price range package deal.
The bill proposes a de minimis exemption for digital asset transactions and capital positive factors of $300 or much less, with a $5,000 annual exemption cap.
The Wyoming Senator additionally outlined provisions to exempt crypto lending agreements and digital assets used in charitable contributions from taxation. Moreover, the invoice proposed deferring taxes on mining and staking rewards till the underlying property are bought. Lummis said:
“This groundbreaking laws is absolutely paid for, cuts by way of the bureaucratic purple tape, and establishes commonsense guidelines that mirror how digital applied sciences perform in the actual world. We can’t enable our archaic tax insurance policies to stifle American innovation.
“My laws ensures Individuals can take part within the digital economic system with out inadvertent tax violations,” she added.
The standalone draft invoice is now the Wyoming senator’s greatest probability of passing the pro-crypto laws promised to the crypto neighborhood after the Senator passed the spending bill with out addressing digital property.
$250 million Ondo Catalyst fund alerts “arms race” for RWA tokenization
DeFi protocol Ondo Finance and enterprise agency Pantera Capital plan to ramp up investments in real-world property (RWAs), highlighting the business’s growing deal with tokenization amid favorable regulatory developments in the US.
Each firms knowledgeable Axios that they plan to take a position $250 million in RWAs by way of a brand new fund known as Ondo Catalyst. Ondo’s chief technique officer, Ian De Bode, mentioned the funds will likely be invested to amass fairness stakes and tokens in rising initiatives.
“We’re seeing a little bit of an arms race proper now” within the tokenization market, De Bode instructed Axios, referring to the surge of firms getting into the house. Exchanges specifically are zeroing in on tokenized shares and exchange-traded fund (ETF) choices.
As Cointelegraph recently reported, digital brokerage agency Robinhood has launched a brand new layer-2 blockchain to allow European purchasers to commerce tokenized US shares and ETFs.
In May, Kraken announced plans to supply tokenized US inventory buying and selling to traders outdoors the US.
In the meantime, crypto trade Coinbase is reportedly pursuing regulatory approval to supply tokenized equities, a transfer that will assist it compete with Robinhood and different buying and selling platforms.
Ondo Finance has been ramping up its push into onchain finance, lately asserting the formation of a Global Markets Alliance with a number of crypto corporations to drive adoption of blockchain-based capital markets. On Thursday, the corporate introduced that OKX Pockets has joined the alliance.
PancakeSwap doubles quarterly quantity to $530 billion as upgrades enhance progress
PancakeSwap, a multichain decentralized trade (DEX), reported a record-breaking $325 billion in buying and selling quantity for June, the very best month-to-month buying and selling quantity within the platform’s five-year historical past.
The June complete surpassed May’s $174 billion and pushed PancakeSwap’s second-quarter quantity to $530 billion, greater than doubling the $211 billion recorded within the first quarter, in line with information from Dune Analytics.
The surge in exercise follows a sequence of current upgrades, together with the April rollout of PancakeSwap Infinity, which launched a number of options designed to enhance person expertise and buying and selling effectivity.
The improve launched decrease gasoline charges, customizable liquidity swimming pools utilizing “Hooks,” and assist for superior liquidity suppliers by way of CLAMM and LBAMM pool varieties.
Chef Youngsters, head of PancakeSwap, instructed Cointelegraph that PancakeSwap Infinity presents key benefits for builders and liquidity suppliers. For builders, the platform permits new pool varieties and customized Hooks to be built-in with out redeploying good contracts or launching new variations, which “drastically lowers growth overhead and accelerates innovation.”
FATF’s crypto guidelines hints at subsequent regulatory crackdown
Cryptocurrency laws are more and more aligning with international requirements as 73% of eligible jurisdictions have now handed legal guidelines to implement the Monetary Motion Job Pressure’s (FATF) Journey Rule.
The Journey Rule mandates crypto service suppliers to gather and share customers’ transaction information, just like conventional finance necessities. On June 26, the FATF released its annual report that outlines how current regulatory strikes by jurisdictions are converging with its international Anti-Cash Laundering (AML) framework.
This can be a direct results of a years-long marketing campaign by the FATF to convey cryptocurrencies in keeping with conventional AML and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CFT) requirements.
The FATF spotlighted stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) for the second consecutive 12 months, highlighting their rising use in illicit finance, together with by North Korean actors. The group mentioned it plans to launch focused papers on stablecoins, offshore crypto platforms and DeFi by subsequent summer time, hinting at the place international crypto regulation could head subsequent.
Crypto losses hit $2.5B in first half of 2025, however hacks fall in Q2: CertiK
Losses to crypto hacks, exploits and scams spiked to $2.47 billion within the first half of 2025, however the second quarter noticed a decline within the complete variety of hacks, mentioned blockchain safety agency CertiK.
Over $800 million was misplaced throughout 144 incidents in Q2, a 52% lower in worth misplaced compared with the earlier quarter, with 59 fewer hacking incidents, CertiK said in a report on Tuesday.
In complete, the primary half of 2025 noticed greater than $2.47 billion in losses due to hacks, scams and exploits, representing a virtually 3% improve over the $2.4 billion stolen in 2024.
Nevertheless, contemplating the greater than $187 million returned throughout the 12 months’s first half, CertiK mentioned the adjusted complete is nearer to $2.2 billion.
Regardless of the spike in losses, CertiK mentioned it doesn’t essentially “counsel a deteriorating safety panorama” as a result of the lion’s share of losses got here from simply two incidents, towards crypto trade Bybit and Cetus Protocol, value $1.78 billion mixed.
DeFi market overview
In response to information from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, a lot of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week within the inexperienced.
The Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) token rose over 66% because the week’s greatest gainer, adopted by the Bonk (BONK) memecoin, up practically 25% on the weekly chart.
Thanks for studying our abstract of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Be a part of us subsequent Friday for extra tales, insights and schooling concerning this dynamically advancing house.
