20th July 2025 > > Crypto Week & LINK.

tl;dr

Crypto week – and wasn’t it just. Shout out to LINK.

Market Snap 

Market Wrap

ETH, and by extension the broader alt markets, continues to gain ground, partly at BTC’s expense. I still maintain that we will not see altseason until the retail army moves into the risky end of cryptos in size, and there remains no evidence of that happening, to the best of my knowledge.

Occasional Series – Rachel from complaints

… is channelling her inner Gordon Brown.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto Week

Well, it turns out that “Crypto Week” (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/9th-july-2025-btcs-crypto-week) was an unprecedented success, despite some politicking shenanigans during the first day or two.

The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins) was passed, and having already been voted through by the Senate, the seal of approval by the House was rapidly followed by Trump’s signature on Friday. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been unflinching in her support for the crypto revolution for years now, explains:

“The signing of the GENIUS Act into law marks an important milestone in the effort to bring regulatory clarity to crypto – a necessary prerequisite for innovation in our markets to flourish and for the American public to benefit from that innovation.

The new law confirms that payment stablecoins are not securities.”

The CCC team has tried to contact Gary Gensler, previously Chair of the SEC and lead lieutenant in Warren’s anti-liberty and anti-freedom army, for his views on this ground-breaking piece of legislation, but all we got was click brrrrr.

I get the sneaking suspicion he doesn’t like me.

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The other two bills that passed muster in the House now go to the Senate for further consideration. And yes, I agree that is the opposite direction of travel for GENIUS, but I am not an expert on the US Constitution, and I cannot explain that apparent discrepancy.

The Clarity Act received bi-partisan support, almost as strongly as GENIUS, which is good to see. Its central provisions relate to the jurisdiction of the SEC and the CFTC with respect to regulating cryptos. Once passed by the Senate, this will make life a whole lot easier for those entrepreneurs who are dead-set on creating crypto tax-dollars for the Trump-led government to fritter away.

In contrast, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act scraped through, but only just, which is really rather very upsetting, and most worrying. This simple act, which will eventually come into force despite some vocal and misplaced opposition, prohibits any development, or even any investigation into the development, of a dollar CBDC. CBDCs are a fabulous tool for oppression, and for the subjugation of us as private individuals.

Those who support CBDCs are truly the enemy of our liberty and our freedom.

I am saddened that one side of the political divide in the US prefers to actively obstruct the outlawing of this instrument of control, which is the modern-day equivalent of the mediaeval tortures of hanging, drawing, and quartering, with a touch of the rack, the Judas Cradle, the tongue tearer, and the thumbscrew, all thrown in for good measure.

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Putting this specific upset of mine to one side, for I can do nothing about it, I think we can agree that was a great week for the crypto industry.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Chainlink

The CCC is not a crypto pick service, for obvious reasons, which go beyond any regulatory restrictions. There are literally thousands of commentators and youtubers who will happily try to convince you to buy or sell a particular crypto. I am sure I don’t need to warn you that most of them don’t know their arse from their elbow, and many employ snake oil, aka technical analysis, as the basis for their rather contentious claims. But sometimes we do talk about individual coins, if there are developments that are central to the crypto revolution.

And so today, we will revisit LINK, the token native to crypto oracle Chainlink.

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Before we begin, I must remind you that the CC Treasury has been an investor in LINK since 2019, when it was trading below a dollar. Its ATH in 2021 of $53 seemed to be a high-water mark that could never be breached again, but perhaps that strongly held view of mine is soon to be proven wrong.

The basic idea is a simple one – the crypto industry needs a decentralised and secure source of information, a need initially highlighted by the growth of DeFi. Many of the DeFi scams in the past came about because of market manipulation of the prices of small-cap coins, directly impacting the borrowing/lending protocols at the heart of DeFi. Those scams are much less prevalent today, and Chainlink has played a big part in helping to solve that particular problem.

The big opportunity for Chainlink is the growth of the tokenisation industry, which Larry Fink, founder and CEO of one of the most successful financial services businesses of all time, BlackRock, has described as “the most disruptive financial innovation since ETFs”. And he should know, given that he almost single-handedly invented the ETF market.

Larry’s strategic focus on tokenisation undoubtedly played a role in his pushing for spot BTC ETFs, the most successful launch of a financial services product ever, bar none. BlackRock has since been involved in some small forays into the tokenisation world, but Larry’s vision is far greater:

“Every asset can be tokenized.”

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Chainlink has joined the SEC’s crypto task force looking at tokenisation, and how it can be used to improve outcomes for both investors and those looking for investment money. Productivity gains can only come about through investment. Lowering the cost of capital for industry – which tokenisation promises to do in spades – makes all of us wealthier.

I think it must be apparent to even the most naïve of investors, that provision of high-quality financial data in real-time, on demand, is a necessary requirement for the nascent tokenisation industry. If you will, a crypto version of the original single page typed sheet of bond prices circulated at the end of the day in the ‘70s that morphed into financial services giant Bloomberg. That is the opportunity on offer here.

Someone, and it may not be Chainlink, will make out like a bandit by getting this right.