Bitcoin trades near $64,000 on July 18, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. EDT, holding inside a tight range after bouncing off a 24-hour low of $62,516. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap has consolidated between $63,900 and $64,000 for several hours as traders wait for a volume-backed move past nearby resistance.

Traditional wealth management is constrained by slow, expensive, siloed legacy settlement layers that rely on redundant manual compliance checks. Abdul Rafay Gadit discusses how purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain architecture resolves these systemic inefficiencies.

Self-custodial trading platform Sedona has partnered with Fhenix to integrate confidential fully homomorphic encryption infrastructure into its system.

SBI Holdings has acquired a majority stake in Singapore-based crypto exchange Coinhako after securing regulatory approval. The deal strengthens the Japanese financial group’s push into digital assets, stablecoins and tokenized markets across Asia.

Dmitry Dubynin, CEO of the National Payment Card System (NSPK), stressed that cards issued by Visa and Mastercard “don’t provide any value,” as their operations are currently supported by the national system. Visa and Mastercard exited the Russian market in March 2022.

Ripple has committed $250,000 in RLUSD-funded grants to 25 veteran- and military spouse-owned businesses through a collaboration with Hire Heroes USA.

T. Rowe Price, which manages $1.89 trillion in client assets, has launched TKNZ, an actively managed multi-token spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering exposure to bitcoin, ether, XRP, and other leading cryptocurrencies.

Underdog has filed the first seven sports event-contract templates for UDX, the federally regulated exchange it acquired in March. The filings target an initial listing no later than July 17, moving Underdog closer to controlling its own contracts rather than relying exclusively on outside exchanges.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has signed an executive order on virtual assets to address a fragmented regulatory landscape and protect citizens from fraud.

According to Econalitica, an economic consulting firm, Binance P2P volumes reached nearly 1.38 billion USDT between June 11 and July 13, a daily average of 44 million USDT. These numbers represent 75% of the national oil exports’ monthly volumes, underscoring the relevance of crypto markets.

Bitcoin fell for a second straight day, dropping 1.4% to trade just under $63,600. It hit a session low of $62,732 early Friday, trimming its market cap and dragging the aggregate crypto market capitalization down 1.8% to $2.26 trillion.

Polymarket traders lifted the odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law this year to 35% on July 17, a sharp recovery from the market’s record low of 24% hit just four days earlier.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says USDT’s user base is growing by more than 30 million wallets per quarter, extending the stablecoin’s lead as its market capitalization hovers near record levels.

Crypto ETF demand split sharply on Thursday, July 16, as bitcoin products drew $79.15 million while ether funds lost $28.04 million. XRP and Solana ETFs also attracted fresh capital, while T. Rowe Price launched a multi-token fund with an unusually large HYPE allocation.

A whale wallet linked to venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) deposited 437,000 HYPE worth $28.38 million to exchanges over two days, as HYPE fell by nearly 11%.