Optimistic regulatory expectations became the focal point for cryptocurrency investors this week, following an event dubbed by the US government as “Crypto Week,” during which lawmakers sought to pass three key regulatory bills for the Web3 industry.
Fueled by the optimistic outlook, Bitcoin (BTC) flipped Amazon’s $2.3 trillion market capitalization and soared to become the world’s fifth-largest asset by total value.
Regulators passed the three key bills amid Republican concerns with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
In a Thursday House session, lawmakers voted 294-134 to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a bill aimed at establishing a market structure for cryptocurrencies, 308-122 in favor of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and 219-210 for the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act.
Industry watchers view the GENIUS Act as the key to legitimizing stablecoins for global adoption among banks and financial institutions.
Bitcoin flips Amazon’s $2.3T market cap to become 5th global asset
Bitcoin has become the world’s fifth-largest asset, overtaking Amazon by market capitalization.
Bitcoin (BTC) price rose to a new all-time high of $122,600 on Monday and has soared nearly 13% over the past week, as Cointelegraph reported.
These gains allowed Bitcoin to surpass a $2.4 trillion market capitalization, overtaking Amazon’s $2.3 trillion, Silver’s $2.2 trillion and Alphabet’s (Google) $2.19 trillion, Cointelegraph data shows.
This meant Bitcoin’s market cap was only $730 million shy of tech giant Apple at the time of writing.
The development signals Bitcoin’s growing presence in the global financial system, according to Enmanuel Cardozo, market analyst at real-world asset tokenization platform Brickken. He told Cointelegraph:
“With institutional giants like BlackRock and MicroStrategy’s treasury continually increasing, the legitimacy of Bitcoin as an investable asset class is no longer in question, with regulatory momentum also shifting.”
Cardozo said that continued institutional accumulation and the “supportive macro environment may help Bitcoin surpass Apple’s valuation, implying a Bitcoin price of over $142,000.
Grayscale submits confidential IPO filing with SEC
Cryptocurrency-focused asset manager and exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer Grayscale joined a growing list of crypto companies seeking to launch IPOs in the United States.
On Monday, Grayscale said it had filed to list its company shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under a new clause that enables confidential filings ahead of a final public offering.
Entering public markets would enable Grayscale to seek more funding opportunities through strategies such as public stock offerings, which was leveraged by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, or convertible note offerings, such as GameStop’s $2.25 billion offering from June 13.
Grayscale’s filing comes over a month after Circle, the issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin USDC (USDC), upsized its IPO to more than $1.05 billion and debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on June 5.
The IPO pricing gave Circle a valuation of $6.9 billion based on the more than 220 million outstanding shares listed in its June 2 filing.
Circle’s IPO success may inspire more crypto-native firms to move into public markets with similar offerings, sparking a renewed crypto IPO season in 2025.
Trump’s World Liberty crypto tokens are set to become tradable
Tokenholders of US President Donald Trump-backed crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) have voted to make them tradable, opening the door for the Trump-linked token to increase in value.
The proposal submitted by the WLFI team on July 9 closed on Wednesday, with an “overwhelming” 99.94% in favor of the unlock. It will make the platform’s governance token tradable through peer-to-peer transactions and secondary markets.
“Following the vote to make the token tradable, WLFI’s governance framework will enable more tokenholders to participate directly in protocol decisions,” the WLFI team said in the proposal.
“This includes voting on emissions, ecosystem incentives, and future treasury actions. This proposal is the first step in handing greater influence to the community.”
Not all the governance tokens will be unlocked at once, according to the WLFI team, and a full launch plan is coming soon, according to WLFI’s post on X on Wednesday.
DEX-to-CEX ratio hits new high as crypto traders flee centralization
Cryptocurrency traders have been moving away from centralized exchanges (CEXs) in favor of decentralized exchanges (DEXs), pushing the CEX-to-DEX ratio to a new all-time high.
Spot trading volume on DEXs surged at least 25% in the second quarter of 2025 over the previous quarter, while CEXs volumes plunged almost 28%, according to the latest quarterly industry report by the crypto data aggregator CoinGecko.
This shift drove the DEX-to-CEX ratio to a record high in Q2, rising from 0.13 in the previous quarter to 0.23, the report noted.
Despite the increasing ratio, the spot DEX market is still significantly smaller than CEX, with the top 10 decentralized trading platforms posting $877 billion in volume in Q2, compared with $3.9 trillion for CEXs.
BTCFi TVL jumps 22x to $7B, but trust remains an issue
Bitcoin-based decentralized finance (DeFi), often referred to as BTCFi, is experiencing significant growth but still faces challenges.
According to DefiLlama data, Bitcoin-based (BTC) DeFi protocols’ total value locked (TVL) went from $304.66 million on Jan. 1, 2024, to $6.5 billion by Dec. 31, 2024. As of publication, DefiLlama data shows that BTCFi has a TVL of $7.05 billion.
This translates to an increase of more than 22 times. A report shared by Bitcoin smart-contract layer Arch Network suggests that “this surge was fueled by new protocol launches, emerging token standards, institutional inflows, a major price rally pushing BTC to an all-time high, and the rise of liquid restaking.”
The survey results released in the report show that despite some solutions already on the market, 36% of the respondents do not engage with BTCFi due to a lack of trust. One-quarter avoid interactions with BTCFi due to risk and fear of losses. Most (60%) view smart-contract exploits as the top security risk.
DeFi market overview
According to Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The Curve DAO (CRV) token was the biggest gainer in the top 100, rising more than 63% over the past week, followed by the Stellar (XLM) token, up over 63%.
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.