US Senator Cynthia Lummis submitted a draft bill on Thursday proposing to exempt certain crypto transactions from taxation and defer taxes on mining and staking rewards until the underlying tokens are sold.
“My legislation ensures Americans can participate in the digital economy without inadvertent tax violations,” said Lummis.
The senator’s draft bill was published three weeks after the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, passed the Senate in a 68–30 vote on June 11, Cointelegraph reported.
The GENIUS Act may “legitimize” stablecoins for institutional participants by setting clear collateralization standards, cementing them as a “better form of money,” said Andrei Grachev, managing partner at DWF Labs and Falcon Finance.
The increasing US regulatory clarity may enable more traditional finance players to seek out decentralized financial services, due to their disappointment with traditional banking services, according to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov.
“Thanks to horrible banking experiences, we’ve seen a lot of finance coming into fintech, and fintech applications able to capture a lot of market share,” Kulechov said onstage at EthCC 2025.
Beyond decentralized finance (DeFi), the tokenization of real-world assets is a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity” for the crypto sector to engage with traditional finance, added Kulechov.
In the wider crypto space, Chainlink, a decentralized blockchain oracle network for crosschain communication, launched a new compliance framework aimed at unlocking over $100 trillion worth of institutional capital for the crypto market.
“Chainlink ACE is the compliance and identity standard the tokenized asset economy has been waiting for, with today’s launch providing a final critical building block for over $100 trillion in institutional capital to move onchain,” said Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis drafts standalone crypto tax bill
US Senator Cynthia Lummis submitted a draft bill on Thursday, outlining several provisions to overhaul the tax code and exempt certain digital asset transactions from taxation after crypto amendments failed to appear in the budget package.
The bill proposes a de minimis exemption for digital asset transactions and capital gains of $300 or less, with a $5,000 annual exemption cap.
The Wyoming Senator also outlined provisions to exempt crypto lending agreements and digital assets used in charitable contributions from taxation. Additionally, the bill proposed deferring taxes on mining and staking rewards until the underlying assets are sold. Lummis said:
“This groundbreaking legislation is fully paid for, cuts through the bureaucratic red tape, and establishes common-sense rules that reflect how digital technologies function in the real world. We cannot allow our archaic tax policies to stifle American innovation.
“My legislation ensures Americans can participate in the digital economy without inadvertent tax violations,” she added.
The standalone draft bill is now the Wyoming senator’s best chance of passing the pro-crypto legislation promised to the crypto community after the Senator passed the spending bill without addressing digital assets.
$250 million Ondo Catalyst fund signals “arms race” for RWA tokenization
DeFi protocol Ondo Finance and venture firm Pantera Capital plan to ramp up investments in real-world assets (RWAs), highlighting the industry’s increasing focus on tokenization amid favorable regulatory developments in the United States.
Both companies informed Axios that they plan to invest $250 million in RWAs through a new fund called Ondo Catalyst. Ondo’s chief strategy officer, Ian De Bode, said the funds will be invested to acquire equity stakes and tokens in emerging projects.
“We are seeing a bit of an arms race right now” in the tokenization market, De Bode told Axios, referring to the surge of companies entering the space. Exchanges in particular are zeroing in on tokenized stocks and exchange-traded fund (ETF) offerings.
As Cointelegraph recently reported, digital brokerage firm Robinhood has launched a new layer-2 blockchain to enable European clients to trade tokenized US stocks and ETFs.
In May, Kraken announced plans to offer tokenized US stock trading to investors outside the United States.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Coinbase is reportedly pursuing regulatory approval to offer tokenized equities, a move that would help it compete with Robinhood and other trading platforms.
Ondo Finance has been ramping up its push into onchain finance, recently announcing the formation of a Global Markets Alliance with several crypto firms to drive adoption of blockchain-based capital markets. On Thursday, the company announced that OKX Wallet has joined the alliance.
PancakeSwap doubles quarterly volume to $530 billion as upgrades boost growth
PancakeSwap, a multichain decentralized exchange (DEX), reported a record-breaking $325 billion in trading volume for June, the highest monthly trading volume in the platform’s five-year history.
The June total surpassed May’s $174 billion and pushed PancakeSwap’s second-quarter volume to $530 billion, more than doubling the $211 billion recorded in the first quarter, according to data from Dune Analytics.
The surge in activity follows a series of recent upgrades, including the April rollout of PancakeSwap Infinity, which introduced several features designed to improve user experience and trading efficiency.
The upgrade introduced lower gas fees, customizable liquidity pools using “Hooks,” and support for advanced liquidity providers through CLAMM and LBAMM pool types.
Chef Kids, head of PancakeSwap, told Cointelegraph that PancakeSwap Infinity offers key advantages for developers and liquidity providers. For developers, the platform allows new pool types and custom Hooks to be integrated without redeploying smart contracts or launching new versions, which “drastically lowers development overhead and accelerates innovation.”
FATF’s crypto checklist hints at next regulatory crackdown
Cryptocurrency regulations are increasingly aligning with global standards as 73% of eligible jurisdictions have now passed laws to implement the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) Travel Rule.
The Travel Rule mandates crypto service providers to collect and share users’ transaction data, similar to traditional finance requirements. On June 26, the FATF released its annual report that outlines how recent regulatory moves by jurisdictions are converging with its global Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework.
This is a direct result of a years-long campaign by the FATF to bring cryptocurrencies in line with traditional AML and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CFT) standards.
The FATF spotlighted stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) for the second consecutive year, highlighting their rising use in illicit finance, including by North Korean actors. The organization said it plans to release targeted papers on stablecoins, offshore crypto platforms and DeFi by next summer, hinting at where global crypto regulation may head next.
Crypto losses hit $2.5B in first half of 2025, but hacks fall in Q2: CertiK
Losses to crypto hacks, exploits and scams spiked to $2.47 billion in the first half of 2025, but the second quarter saw a decline in the total number of hacks, said blockchain security firm CertiK.
Over $800 million was lost across 144 incidents in Q2, a 52% decrease in value lost compared with the previous quarter, with 59 fewer hacking incidents, CertiK said in a report on Tuesday.
In total, the first half of 2025 saw more than $2.47 billion in losses due to hacks, scams and exploits, representing a nearly 3% increase over the $2.4 billion stolen in 2024.
However, considering the more than $187 million returned across the year’s first half, CertiK said the adjusted total is closer to $2.2 billion.
Despite the spike in losses, CertiK said it doesn’t necessarily “suggest a deteriorating security landscape” because the lion’s share of losses came from just two incidents, against crypto exchange Bybit and Cetus Protocol, worth $1.78 billion combined.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) token rose over 66% as the week’s biggest gainer, followed by the Bonk (BONK) memecoin, up nearly 25% on the weekly chart.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.