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Most trade deals are apparently still in limbo, but the 90-day pause on the majority of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs is expiring soon. July 9, to be exact. 



Here’s what we know about where we stand and how tariffs continue to impact markets and monetary policy. 



In a Fox News interview recorded Friday and released Sunday, Trump said that while he doesn't intend on extending the pause, he “could.” 



Bloomberg and Reuters, both citing sources familiar, reported this morning that the European Union is willing to accept a trade agreement with the US (pending a few adjustments). The European Commission has agreed to a 10% tariff on several industries but asked for lower levies on a few sectors: pharmaceuticals, alcohol, semiconductors and commercial aircrafts, per Bloomberg. 



A Canada-US deal is looking more promising after the former said it would abandon a proposed digital services tax (Trump last week called that a “direct and blatant attack” on the US). White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox yesterday that trade talks would resume “immediately.” Reuters reported that the US and Canada plan to have a deal penned by July 21. 



China and the US entered a separate agreement in June to pause certain levies until Aug. 9, so next week’s deadline does not apply to Chinese imports. 



While much of Washington is busy at the negotiating table, Fed Chair Jerome Powell spent Tuesday morning speaking at the European Central Bank forum in Portugal. The ECB’s Christine Lagarde said she’s very satisfied that the region’s inflation has reached its 2% target. 



“I’m not saying mission accomplished, but I am saying target reached,” she said — adding that though there’s increased uncertainty ahead, the central bank is well equipped for the “tormented waters.” 



If Powell, who spoke on a panel with

Tariff deadline approaches as Powell says trade policies delayed rate cut

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During Robinhood’s big crypto announcements in France this week, including an Arbitrum L2 chain of its own, the consumer trading app also unveiled a multiyear sponsorship with French soccer team OGC Nice that kicks off in the 2025/2026 season. 



The Robinhood logo will appear across the front of team shirts, plus training and warm-up kits. Expect branded content and digital collabs, as well. 



Robinhood will also be part of a dedicated web series with OGC Nice about financial accessibility, according to a message from a spokesperson.



“France is fast cementing its position as a global fintech hub — and it plays an important role in our international footprint,” said Robinhood Crypto SVP and GM Johann Kerbrat in a statement. 




L'OGC Nice et @RobinhoodApp annoncent un partenariat pluriannuel de sponsoring pour la face avant du maillot ⤵︎— OGC Nice (@ogcnice) July 1, 2025




“This partnership represents a personal and meaningful moment for me as a lifelong football fan who studied and began my career in Nice, but it also demonstrates our commitment to growing our presence as Robinhood expands across the EU. It presents an opportunity to connect with a passionate fan base and introduce new audiences to a cutting-edge suite of financial products,” Kerbrat said.



Robinhood made some big announcements for EU customers this week including over 200 tokenized stocks and ETFs, plus perpetual futures. Prospective perp traders will have to fill out an application to be approved, though.



The duration and financial terms of Robinhood’s deal with the Ligue 1 soccer team haven’t been publicly disclosed.



The soccer and sports worlds more broadly aren’t strangers to crypto partnerships, of course. FC Barcelona unveiled an NFT avatar and crypto wallet play last month, for instance. 



Robinhood has sponsored a few NBA teams in the past including the Washington

Robinhood sponsors French soccer team OGC Nice

The SEC is set to allow an index ETF holding crypto assets beyond bitcoin and ether to start trading in the US, marking another regulatory win for issuers in the segment.



NYSE Arca filed last year to list shares of Grayscale Investments’ Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) as an exchange-traded product. The securities regulator on Tuesday essentially approved that proposal.



GDLC launched as a private placement in 2018 and began publicly trading on OTC Markets the following year; it has roughly $775 million of assets under management. While 91% of the fund’s assets are allocated to bitcoin and ether, it also holds XRP, solana (SOL) and cardano (ADA).  



Spot crypto ETFs have so far been limited to holding the two largest crypto assets. US spot bitcoin and ether ETFs launched in January 2024 and July 2024, respectively. Products holding a combination of BTC and ETH — issued by Hashdex and Franklin Templeton — hit the market in February.    



Read more: Crypto indexes offer ‘biggest opportunity’ as SEC decision looms: Hashdex CIO



Various industry observers and executives expected this approval. 



Grayscale ETF head David LaValle said on Nate Geraci’s Crypto Prime podcast in May that he anticipated a multi-token offering would be the next crypto ETF to launch — noting “good conversations” with the NYSE and SEC.



Bloomberg Intelligence analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas wrote in a note last month that they expected the SEC to greenlight the conversions of GDLC — as well as the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW) — to ETFs by the July 2 deadline.



BITW, which holds 10 crypto assets, also has a heavy combined weighting (nearly 90%) to BTC and ETH. 



“Having only small allocations to alternative coins might help their conversion bids even if the SEC hasn’t individually approved each asset for an ETF,” the Bloomberg analysts previously explained. 



Geraci, president of The ETF Store, had shared a similar view in an X

SEC greenlights Grayscale crypto index fund conversion to ETF

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The below picture of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was from a recent NATO summit.







Is that a suit Zelenskyy is wearing?



The New York Post called it a suit, The Sun called it a “slick black suit”, and Reuters called it a “suit-style jacket”.



But ChatGPT disagrees:




Under a narrow, traditional definition (tailored jacket with lapels + matching trousers made of the same suiting fabric), this outfit would not be called a suit. The jacket’s collar, patch pockets, utilitarian cut, and overall “field” or “workwear” styling put it outside classic suiting.




Anyway, the answer to that incredibly inane question is key — there's a Polymarket bet ("Will Zelenskyy wear a suit before July?") with $12 million of open interest riding on it.



Unfortunately for bettors, mainstream media opinion is not the final resort of resolution on Polymarket — that decision lies with UMA token holders.



UMA whales are disputing that Zelenskyy was wearing a suit, so the market has currently cratered to a 3% implied probability of resolving to a “YES” vote now. 



That has, hilariously, sparked activist Twitter pages like “ZELENSKYY WORE A SUIT,” accusations of oracle capture, and what some are calling “Suitgate.”



I’m not here to referee Zelenskyy’s wardrobe debate.



I only wish to point out that newer prediction markets are catching on to this problem and innovating new ways to mitigate this “buy-the-truth” problem that can emerge on UMA.



Inside XO Market



Take XO Market, an upcoming prediction market built as a sovereign appchain using Celestia for data availability.



To eliminate oracle capture, XO Market’s oracle system is designed to be AI-first. The oracle queries “trusted APIs” and “uses algorithmic data retrieval and machine learning to quickly determine objectively verifiable outcomes,” according to its

Permissionless prediction market XO Market raises $500K in pre-seed round

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The Mount Rushmore of Bitcoin. Who’s on it?



Definitely Hal Finney. Jack Dorsey, probably. Adam Back? Maybe Tim Draper, or Ross Ulbricht.



Whoever you choose, there had better be room for Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.



For the real Mount Rushmore, each of the four presidential heads is meant to represent one of the following: the founding of the US, its expansion, its development, and its preservation.



The Winklevoss twins would best fit into the second slot of the Bitcoin version. Expansion.



Whereas Thomas Jefferson brokered the Westward Expansion — buying the Louisiana Territory from France for a cool $15 million, instantly doubling the size of the country — the Winklevoss twins sought to rapidly broaden Bitcoin’s influence with its first ETF.



Exactly 12 years ago today, the brothers filed for what they called the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust — a first-of-its-kind exchange-traded fund sponsored by the twins’ firm, Math-Based Asset Services, to the tune of $20 million in bitcoin (200,000 BTC).



One percent of BTC was about $11 million in July 2013, when each coin was worth $120, putting the Winklevoss’ unit count at around 100,000 BTC ($10.65 billion today).



The brothers had, three months earlier, disclosed that they’d quietly accumulated 1% of bitcoin’s circulating supply via their family office, Winklevoss Capital. 



“We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error,” Tyler told the New York Times. Initially, each share would be worth 0.20 BTC, worth about $24 at the time and $21,000 currently.



Under the surface, the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would’ve mirrored SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), with in-kind redemption, fees paid in BTC, and private keys to the Trust’s coins held under physical custody in bank vaults. 



The bitcoins were to be managed by a unit of Delaware

Why the Winklevoss bros should be on Bitcoin’s Mt. Rushmore

Botanix Labs has officially launched its mainnet, introducing what it calls the first fully decentralized, EVM-equivalent Bitcoin layer-2. 



Live today, Botanix promises Bitcoiners access to DeFi features familiar to Ethereum users — such as trading, borrowing, lending, staking, LPing — but denominated natively in Bitcoin, with transaction finality in five seconds and average fees around $0.02.



Unlike typical federated sidechains or custodial bridges, Botanix relies on a novel security model called Spiderchain. This design uses BTC-staked Orchestrator nodes, selected via randomness sourced from Bitcoin block hashes, to manage a rotating multisig peg-in/peg-out system. State transitions are also anchored back to Bitcoin itself.



This combination of proof-of-stake-style incentives with direct Bitcoin anchoring, aims to provide a middle ground between Ethereum’s flexibility and Bitcoin’s security principles.



Earlier this week, Botanix finalized its founding 16-node federation, featuring Galaxy, Fireblocks, and Alchemy, among other recognizable names. The governance transition removes operational control from Botanix Labs, distributing consensus and custody among independent operators. The network is designed to expand into a permissionless set of over 100 nodes by next year.



For users, the Spiderchain peg offers a crucial promise: fast exit back to Bitcoin itself, according to Willem Schroé, CEO and co-Founder of Botanix Labs:



“One of the interesting things about the Spiderchain is you can immediately withdraw back to Bitcoin, so you won't have any liquidation or redeemability risks,” Schroé told Blockworks.



That design choice directly addresses longstanding criticisms of wrapped bitcoin models on Ethereum, which depend on either centralized custodians to process redemptions, opaque validator sets, or multi-day unbonding periods. Botanix’s rotating multisig aims to make these risks transparent, economically secure, and Bitcoin-native,

Botanix, a Bitcoin-based EVM chain, reaches mainnet

The experience users have when interacting with onchain apps and wallets is one of the biggest barriers to crypto adoption. The tools exist, the infrastructure is maturing but what we’ve lacked is alignment. A shared understanding of what “great” actually looks like.



That’s why we launched WalletConnect Certified.



Since Round 1 debuted at DevCon 2024, Certified has become a benchmark for wallet quality, a clear, community-driven standard for user experience, integration, and security. Think of it as the “DappRadar for wallets”: a signal users can trust, and a framework developers can build toward. And with the launch of Round 2, we're raising the bar again.



WalletConnect Certified is not just a recognition program, it’s a movement to improve how users onboard, transact, and engage across the onchain ecosystem. It reflects a simple belief: if we want to scale trust and usability, we need shared expectations and consistent experiences.



Round 2 welcomes 9 new Certified wallets, including, Fireblocks, CTRL, Blockchain.com, Rakuten, BitPay, xPortal, Bitcoin.com, Bifrost, and Best alongside returning leaders like Safe, Trust Wallet, Zerion, Ledger, Binance Web3 Wallet, and many others.



Each Certified wallet has met rigorous criteria, including:




Top 50 ranking by users and activity on the WalletConnect Network



Support for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (where applicable)



Link-mode integration for instant mobile connections without QR codes



One-click wallet authentication (1wCA) for secure, passwordless logins




These features aren’t nice-to-haves, they’re the foundation of a better user experience. And they represent the kind of usability that will unlock the next wave of onchain adoption.



Certification is more than a badge. It's a commitment to building wallets that are not only secure and performant, but intuitive for everyday users. For developers, it’s a reference point, a practical checklist for excellence. For

Raising the standard for onchain UX with WalletConnect certified

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“We are the best place in the world to fail.”



— Jeff Bezos








Crypto markets can win by frequently failing



Charlie Munger once said that in 50 years of reading Barron's, he had found just one investable idea.



It was an unusually good one, though.



After a Barron’s article caught Munger’s eye in 2020, he spent just 90 minutes researching the auto parts company Tenneco before investing around $5 million.



Two years later, Tenneco was taken private at 15 times the price Munger had paid.



Munger then rolled his $80 million windfall into a fund managed by his friend, Li Lu, who more than quadrupled his money from there.



“So I have made $400 or $500 million reading Barron's for 50 years and following one idea,” Munger concluded.



The twofold moral of the story, he implied, is that 1) it only takes one great idea to make it big, and 2) you should ignore all the others while you wait for it.



“The trick in investing,” Warren Buffett liked to say, “is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot.”



I'm not sure how actionable that advice is for us mere mortals of investing; few of us will be able to pick out the one winner in 50 years of Barron's articles.



But we can take heart in the idea that one big winner can more than offset a lot of our inevitable losers.



This is even more true in business.



In baseball, to extend Buffett’s analogy, swinging for the fences can only ever earn you four runs.



In the stock market, you might get the occasional “10-bagger” (or maybe even a 15-bagger, like Munger’s Tenneco investment), but not much more.



In business, however, “that upside isn’t really capped,” as Jeff Bezos explains. “Every once in a while in business, you step up to the plate, you swing as hard as you can, and you get 1,000 runs.”



Bezos was always

Crypto markets can win by frequently failing

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On Friday, the SEC informed REX Shares and Osprey Funds that it had “no further comments” on their solana staking ETF filing.



In ETF regulatory parlance, industry watchers often view that phrase as the SEC’s implicit greenlight. It’s the same wink-and-a-nod that preceded the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity and others.



Essentially, the review is done. Fire when ready. According to a post on X, the fund will begin trading this Wednesday, July 2.



The product, officially titled the REX-Osprey Solana and Staking ETF, would be the first US ETF to offer investors exposure to Solana’s price movements alongside native staking rewards.



Unlike traditional crypto trusts, this ETF is structured under the Investment Company Act of 1940 using a C-corporation format, which allows staking income to flow through to investors without triggering regulatory red flags around yield, taxation or custody.



That structure was the hurdle.



When treated as ordinary income, staking rewards had proven incompatible with trust-based fund models, which couldn’t easily distribute variable staking yields.



On May 30, the SEC asked REX and Osprey to delay the effective date of their registration statements, citing unresolved concerns over whether the proposed fund structures met the definition of an “investment company” under the 1940 Act.



Bloomberg’s James Seyffart noted at the time that the funds’ “unique” C-corp format could bypass the typical 19b-4 rule-change process, and the SEC’s silence on the C-corp workaround now appears to validate it as a compliant solution.



REX Shares, stretching for its victory lap, has already begun publicly teasing the ETF as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, analysts like Eric Balchunas weighed in: “They are good to launch it looks like. Wow,” he posted on X.



Until now, access to staking meant handing

SEC clears way for first Solana staking ETF

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In the 1980s, Ric Edelman started what is now called Edelman Financial Engines — a registered investment adviser that had $287 billion assets under management at the end of Q1. He’s now recommending a 10% allocation to crypto for conservative investors. 



That should go up to 25% and 40% for those with moderate or aggressive risk appetites, respectively, he advised in a report earlier this month. An excerpt is below:  







Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas labeled Edelman “Mr. RIA” in an X post — calling his statement “arguably the most important full throated endorsement of crypto from TradFi world since Larry Fink.”



It’s worth noting that Edelman has been bullish on crypto for years, creating the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals in 2018. He said this month he expects BTC to hit $500,000 by 2030. 



Still, it’s a dramatic increase from when Edelman, in his 2021 book The Truth About Crypto, recommended a 1% allocation. We had heard of adviser allocations to bitcoin ETFs ranging from 1% to 10%, and BlackRock in February started allocating 1-2% of the assets in its alternatives-focused model portfolios to its IBIT offering.



Unlike four years ago, there’s no risk the US government could ban crypto (and it actually supports the space), Edelman told me. Bank and brokerage firms can also now trade and custody crypto, allowing the adviser community to participate. Crypto has survived scandals and institutional engagement has begun, he added.



“A 40% allocation today is actually safer than a 1% allocation was four years ago,” Edelman said.



The financial pro has lots of chats with advisers, senior firm management and individual investors. 



“Some are crypto-curious with no established view,” Edelman explained. “Others are skeptics, and some are downright hostile.”



As he put it, there are those who

Why an RIA founder is suggesting a 10-40% crypto allocation

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Frustrated owners of Ledger’s Nano S hardware wallet aren’t happy the company will no longer provide updates for the nearly decade-old device.



For some, hardware wallets are intended to be a way to safely HODL crypto for many years — sometimes decades. At least that’s (in theory) what many users want to do, so the potential for long-term cold storage is one of the main appeals of a hardware wallet.



But Ledger retired its Nano S device in 2022 and is now in the process of phasing out support for it. The Nano S was released in 2016, meaning it was sold for six years.



I spotted dozens of frustrated, confused, and angry comments on CT from crypto traders unsure about what the move means. They called the Nano S sunset “uncool” and “scammy,” while others raised concerns about the device’s security going forward if any possible bugs are left unaddressed. 



For some customers, it may also raise questions about whether they’ll need to keep buying new hardware wallets every five to 10 years if more older models are deprecated in the future. While older Ledger wallets cost around $100 each, newer models like the Ledger Flex are $250 and the Ledger Stax is $400. The Nano X is $150.



In response to the confusion, Ledger repeatedly said that while updates for the device are being phased out, the wallet will “still work.” The company is recommending users buy a newer device, though (and is offering Nano S owners 20% off to upgrade to a wallet that’s still being updated).




👉 Your Ledger Nano S still works, and the Ledger Nano S Plus remains fully supported.The Nano S had an incredible run, it was officially retired in 2022. Since then, we’ve been gradually phasing out its full support. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/OqFNsHL9ti— Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_) June 26, 2025




Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet explained that technical issues played a factor in the

Ledger faces backlash over ending Nano S hardware wallet support

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Kadena announced at EthCC in Cannes that its long-planned Chainweb EVM testnet is live. Unlike Ethereum L2s that promise scaling via rollups, Chainweb EVM runs on Kadena’s braided proof-of-work architecture, designed to scale horizontally without fragmentation from discrete sequencers or bridges.



The result, according to Stuart Popejoy, Kadena co-founder and CEO, is “seamless EVM compatibility without compromising decentralization or throughput.”



“This is vanilla EVM with Pectra, so you can deploy today right now onto our chains,” Popejoy told the audience in Cannes at EthCC today.



Chainweb EVM initially runs five parallel EVM chains on testnet, with Kadena's architecture allowing this number to grow with demand, while still maintaining sub-cent transaction fees. As Popejoy explained:



“Every time we add chains, the throughput goes up linearly for that amount,” Popejoy said. “So for instance, when we went from 10 to 20 chains, our throughput doubled.”



Kadena’s existing chains run Pact, the network’s native smart contract language, designed to prioritize security, auditability, and formal verification. Unlike Solidity (which is Turing-complete and can express anything at the cost of complexity), Pact is intentionally Turing-incomplete.



But like so many L1s and former L1s which have adopted the EVM, the network effects of Ethereum’s virtual machine — especially for things like tooling and wallets — are hard to disrupt. Just today, there were additional EVM launches from heavyweights Ripple and TON, using the Cosmos stack.



Kadena is pitching its proof-of-work roots as a feature, not a bug:



“Proof-of-work is still the most secure and the most decentralized consensus technology out there,” Popejoy said, although this is debated. “It eliminates the need for sequencers...and it's a far more secure architecture.”



But the