CoinDesk

NEW: Japan's Lawson convenience store chain launches a stablecoin payments pilot, accepting yen-denominated $JPYC at its Takanawa Gateway City location in Tokyo from early August.

🎥: @EliBenSasson: "With every advance in quantum, more investors are going to ask: should I reduce my exposure?"

Barnali Biswal, CEO of @HilbertCapital believes "regulation essentially makes the risk visible, and once it is visible, you can quantify it, ... you make it investable." Recorded live at the @xapobankapp summit in London

DATA: The stablecoin market has lost $10B since May, with $7.7B exiting in June alone, the steepest monthly drop since Terra-Luna's collapse in 2022.

STORYTIME: Explaining last week's BONK DAO exploit but was it actually a legal action? CoinDesk's @samewen has the details.

.@renato_mariotti unpacks the prediction market scheme that allegedly generated 500,000 fake Spotify streams for Malcolm Todd's "Earrings" in an effort to influence a market outcome. Thank you to @realfi_co for being a sponsor of the CoinDesk Media Network.

500,000 fake Spotify streams. Where the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve stands. And why @SummerMersinger says prediction markets have the CLARITY Act all wrong. This week on The Policy Protocol, @RebeccaRettig and @renatomariotti break down the biggest stories in crypto law and policy. 0:00 - Summer Mersinger Joins The Policy Protocol 2:08 - Manipulation on Prediction Markets and Spotify 5:29 - Where Is the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve? (Rebecca) 8:28 - Summer Mersinger on Better Markets and Christy Goldsmith Romero 10:18 - CFTC Resources, Funding & Clarity's Regulatory Framework 15:54 - Clarity Passage Odds + The Single-Commissioner Debate 21:07 - Why Jose Mourinho & Future Are Our People of the Week

🎥 @EliBenSasson called Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum roadmap “very good” and “very ambitious."

Where does the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve stand? @RebeccaRettig1 and @renato_mariotti break down the debate over where a U.S. Bitcoin reserve would be held, and the legal and practical hurdles to turning the idea into reality.

Despite prediction markets showing lower odds, @SummerMersinger says she's "99% sure" Congress will vote on the CLARITY Act and puts its chances of passage at around 60%

.@EliBenSasson says the biggest risk to Ethereum is that “something more modern, better” eventually overtakes it, even if that possibility is hard to see today. Thank you to @JPEG_Trading 👋 for being a sponsor of the CoinDesk Media Network.

JUST IN: Apple has sued OpenAI and former Apple executives, alleging the company used stolen trade secrets and confidential information to develop its next generation of AI hardware, per WSJ.

Following SpaceX's blockbuster IPO, on-chain trading volume hit a record $3.86B in June. Backpack CEO @armaniferrante explains why this is just the beginning for 24/7 global capital markets. @jennsanasie brings you Brand New Rails presented by @Realfi_co.

INSIGHT: @Re7Capital's Evgeny Gokhberg (@evgeny_re7) says institutions are finally ready to step into DeFi after five years of track record and the best yield opportunities right now are around tokenized stocks. Recorded live at the @xapobankapp summit 🤝

NEW: Kraken is preparing to launch agentic trading, allowing AI-powered agents to execute trades on users' behalf, CNBC reports.

NEW: OpenAI and Google provided AI services to Singapore-based affiliates of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent despite their parent companies appearing on the Pentagon's blacklist, Per FT.

NEW: U.S. government digital dollar set to be banned tonight under housing law's CBDC limit. @jesseahamilton reports.

LATEST: Hyundai has become the first major South Korean company to use stablecoins for internal cross-border transfers, completing a pilot remittance between its U.S. and Mexico units in about seven minutes. Read the full story on CoinDesk

Is Ethereum moving too slowly? @StarkWareLtd @EliBenSasson unpacks Vitalik's roadmap and timeline on Markets Outlook with @JennSanasie 00:00 - Eli Ben-Sasson Joins Markets Outlook 01:07 - Eli’s Take on Vitalik's Ethereum Roadmap 03:23 - What Eli Would Do Differently: Speed and StarkNet Lessons 04:34 - What's at Stake if Ethereum Falls Behind 06:04 - What Ethereum Needs Now: Speed and Governance Transparency 09:25 - Brand New Rails: SpaceX IPO Drives Record Tokenized Equity Trading 11:16 - Recursive STARKs and Ethereum's Upgrade Path 13:01 - Quantum Computing: Can Ethereum Move Fast Enough? 16:58 - Privacy Wars: Zcash, Ethereum, and the Race for a Standard