US House Sends CBDC Ban to Trump; RLUSD Launches in Japan

US House passes CBDC ban through 2030, sends bill to Trump The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which includes a provision barring the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail central bank digital currency until Dec. 31, 2030, cleared the House 358-32 after passing the Senate 85-5. Stablecoins are explicitly exempt, keeping private dollar tokens as the main digital-dollar route. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law. 12

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin goes live in Japan after JFSA approval Ripple and SBI Group announced the official launch of RLUSD in Japan on June 24, following regulatory approval from the Japan Financial Services Agency. The stablecoin is distributed through SBI VC Trade to both institutional and retail users, marking RLUSD's entry into one of Asia's most regulated markets. RLUSD's global market cap exceeds $1.7 billion. 3456

Bitcoin crashes below $60K, $1B liquidated ahead of $10B options expiry Bitcoin fell to $59,023 on June 25, its lowest since October 2024, amid a global tech selloff and nearly $1 billion in 24-hour liquidations. The drop comes ahead of the largest quarterly options expiry of 2026, worth $10 billion. BTC has lost more than 50% from its all-time high. 7

$292M KelpDAO exploit triggers $10B DeFi exodus A $292 million exploit at KelpDAO over the weekend drained roughly $10 billion from the DeFi market as users rushed to withdraw funds. The attacker stole 116,500 rsETH from KelpDAO's cross-chain bridge via a fraudulent message on the Unichain-to-Ethereum route. Aave took the heaviest blow as the incident sparked bank-run optics across multiple protocols. 8

Abracadabra takes emergency action as MIM stablecoin depegs 50% Magic Internet Money (MIM) fell to $0.49 on June 25, a 50% depeg from its $1 target. Abracadabra launched emergency measures, raising interest rates across all Cauldrons to encourage debt repayment and reduce the $104 million MIM supply. The depeg underscores the fragility of overcollateralized DeFi stablecoins in thin-liquidity bear markets. 9

Circle publishes USDC spec for AI agent machine payments Circle published a formal USDC method specification for the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), standardizing how AI agents settle payments across EVM chains and Solana. The spec introduces the first crosschain MPP payment profile via Circle Gateway and adds USDCx on Stacks. The protocol revives the HTTP 402 'Payment Required' status code for agent-to-agent commerce. 101112

Chainlink joins Project Pangea for stablecoin FX settlement Chainlink joined Project Pangea, a bank-led initiative testing stablecoin-based foreign-exchange settlement between Europe and South Korea. The project involves 47 Korean and European banks and aims to reduce settlement time from T+2 to near-instant T+0 using atomic payment-versus-payment swaps with euro and won stablecoins. 13

Clarity Act heads to Senate floor in July as Lummis clashes with Dimon Senator Cynthia Lummis said the Senate will begin debating the Clarity Act in July, the first public timeline for the digital asset market structure bill. Lummis urged JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to review the bill during the July 4 recess after Dimon criticized it over Bank Secrecy Act concerns. The bill needs 60 votes to pass and faces Democratic concerns over ethics language tied to Trump family crypto holdings. 14

Vitalik Buterin calls for DeFi liquidation reforms Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for reforms to prevent automatic DeFi liquidations from triggering price crashes and cascading market instability. His comments, reported by CryptoSlate, highlight growing scrutiny of automated liquidation mechanisms in the DeFi ecosystem amid recent market volatility. 15

Synthetix founder takes blame for sUSD problems, eyes basis-vault fix Synthetix founder took responsibility for issues with the sUSD stablecoin as the protocol explores a basis-vault fix. The announcement comes amid ongoing challenges for the synthetic asset platform. 16