4th July 2026
tl;dr
There is a new challenger for the USD stablecoin market. Trump’s latest financial disclosure about TRUMP kills off all hope for the CLARITY Act this year.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
Softer jobs data has lowered expectations of interest rate rises in the US. I remain wedded to my view that Kevin Warsh, the new Chair of the Fed, is going to surprise a lot of people. Ditching forward guidance, which Kevin aptly describes as “Fed prophecy”, is just the start of a fundamental reworking of the Fed’s processes. The focus will move to a classical supply-side economics view of the world, away from the micro-financial engineering inherent in a Keynesian approach which, in my view, is so damaging to productivity. A less activist central bank will be of benefit to us all, crypto investor or not.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Open USD (OUSD)
A new and potentially major player in the USD stablecoin market has been announced:
https://joinopenstandard.com/blog/introducing-open-usd
OUSD is intended as a direct challenger to the two big beasts USDT and USDC. USDT has one essential flaw – its lack of adherence to the requirements of the GENIUS Act. USDC is compliant. It has a partnership with Coinbase, to whom it funnels some of the proceeds earned from holding the collateral.
OUSD claims to have 140 partners including companies like Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Google, and Coinbase (which is now in competition with itself), all of whom will earn the rewards from the collateral, minus a management fee. Samara Cohen, Global Head of Market Development at Blackrock, explains:
“We believe stablecoins can play an important role in the evolution of digital markets when supported by trusted infrastructure and practical utility. Open USD is a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value and participate in internet native digital rails.”
Investors in Circle Inc. (the issuer of USDC) took fright at this news, marking the stock down by 18% leading to a 40% decline during June. For disclosure, the CC Treasury is a holder of CRCL stock and is evaluating whether this is simply a great buying opportunity.
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Some of the 140 companies have claimed that they only learnt of their participation from the press release, including Samsung Electronics, Shinhan Financial Group, Dunamu, and K Bank, all of which are Korean. Various commentators say they have been told the same by other companies on the list.
The key requirement for a successful stablecoin is trust, which is why, over time, USDC should win over USDT in time. OUSD has not got off to a good start in that respect.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The CLARITY Act
Our house view has long been that there is virtually no chance of the CLARITY Act making it past the Senate this year. Though there is increasingly bipartisan support for the act as it stands, the desire to add an ethics provision covering elected officials’ crypto activities does not have the same support.
We learnt this week that Trump’s largest source of income in 2025 was $636mm from issuing the memecoin TRUMP. The price action demonstrates where that money came from:
Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator for crypto-hating New York though her personal view is rather more constructive, has been leading the charge to outlaw such flagrant abuses of position and power:
Kirsten explains:
“This is a commonsense requirement that should get broad bipartisan support – public officials and their spouses should not be issuing memecoins … (there must be) ethics reforms that prohibit members of Congress, the president, and their spouses from cashing in on their office.”
No-one could argue otherwise.
Kirsten has also demanded that members of Congress be banned from placing wagers on prediction markets, and that public officials should not be allowed to trade stocks whilst in office.
There are issues here larger than the core purpose of the CLARITY Act. Ethics reforms around presidential and congressional crypto activity have become entangled with the bill and now look too contentious to resolve quickly. These stumbling blocks are too great to overcome. Clarity about the regulatory responsibility for cryptos will have to wait for another time.