Crypto Weekly 7/19/26
Big Banks Test Tokenized Stocks on the DTCC's Blockchain, Visa Launches Stablecoins for 200 Million Merchants, and Airbnb's CEO Gets His X Account Hijacked to Shill Tokenization
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.27T): 0% / -26%
- BTC ($64,452): +1% / -26%
- ETH ($1,872): +3% / -37%
- SOL ($76): -2% / -39%
- HYPE ($61): -10% / +139%
- COIN ($157): -1% / -31%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($184B): 0% / -2%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($73B): 0% / -4%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 57% / 10%
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Tweet volume for Bitcoin and Ethereum has fallen to 12-month lows, roughly the same level of interest seen in 2020. Link.
- The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC), a leading trade processor and clearinghouse, plans to convert a batch of shares and Treasurys into digital tokens. 40 financial firms, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and the NYSE, will take part in a trial run to settle transactions on the blockchain. The DTCC’s approach makes tokenized stocks interchangeable with real shares, with the same legal protections and dividends. Link.
- Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky had his X account hijacked, with the hacker writing a multi-post thread with a bullish view on “real-world asset tokenization”. Link.
- Strategy said it plans to resume buying Bitcoin once the price of its preferred shares, STRC, get back to par. STRC is currently trading at a 12% discount to par. Link.
- Visa unveiled the Visa Stablecoin Platform which lets financial firms issue, move, and manage stablecoins. Visa will initially support Open USD, a stablecoin issued by industry consortium Open Standard. The service will be available to 15,000 financial institutions and more than 200 million merchants. Link. Link.
- Top Pakistani clerics are divided over whether crypto purchases are permitted under Islamic law. Link.
- High profile asset seizures in Russia have caused the country’s richest people to move billions of dollars into crypto, gold, and foreign property and private investment funds. Link.
- Jordan Fish, known by his online moniker ‘Cobie’, will now lead Coinbase’s Base app team as Base creator Jesse Pollack steps down. Pollack noted several of Base’s earlier bets on social and creator coins largely missed the mark. Link.
- Cantor Fitzgerald is partnering with Securitize to allow companies to issue stock on the blockchain when they go public. Link. Link.
- A Stanford study identified signs that traders are manipulating Polymarket’s popular 5-minute Bitcoin betting market through repeated bursts of one-sided trading on Binance that temporarily move Bitcoin’s price in the final seconds before bets are closed. Link.
- Uniswap governance is voting on activating protocol feels on select Uniswap v4 pools for the first time, alongside a separate measure that would extend v2 and v3 fee collection to Robinhood Chain. Link.
- FTX plans to distribute roughly $900 million to creditors. It has distributed nearly $10 billion to creditors since repayments began in 2025. Link.
- Citadel Securities invested $400 million in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation. Link.
- South Korea is establishing the “National Asset Basic Act”, a legal framework for managing state-owned assets including cryptocurrencies. Link.
- Ethereum treasury company Bitmine generated $45.7 in staking revenue in Q2, accounting for nearly 98% of its total revenue. Link.
- A joint UK / US joint taskforce published recommendations for testing tokenized assets across borders and coordinating how banks should treat crypto assets for capital purposes. Link.