🚪 Two Exchanges Gone in One Week, and the Bill That Was Supposed to Fix Everything...

It’s rare for crypto to lose two established exchanges in the same seven days. It’s rarer still for that to happen in the same week Washington’s flagship crypto bill runs out of road. Both happened.

Here’s the full picture, plus what’s coming at you starting tomorrow.

• 🗞️ The big story: BitMEX and BitMart both wind down, and the CLARITY Act stalls

• 🎁 XTB: free Nike share for new users, and the window closes Friday

• 📊 Weekly price check: where the majors sit after a flat, jittery week

• 📰 Everything we published: six stories from the week

• 🔭 The week ahead: the Fed, GDP, PCE, Coinbase earnings and a monthly expiry

• 🧠 Trivia of the week

Two exchanges, three days apart. BitMEX, the venue that invented the perpetual swap and effectively wrote the playbook for leveraged crypto trading, announced it will shut down all operations on September 23 after 11 years.

BitMEX@BitMEX

Dear BitMEX Users, Today, we share with a very heavy heart that BitMEX exchange will shut down its operations, effective 23 September 2026 at 04:00:00 UTC. The owner and operator of BitMEX, HDR Global Trading Limited, has made the difficult decision to close operations

8:01 AM · Jul 23, 2026 · 4.92M Views

1.61K Replies · 1.1K Reposts · 5.3K Likes

Three days later, BitMart announced its own wind-down. Different sizes, different stories, same direction of travel: the mid-tier centralized exchange is being squeezed from both ends, by regulated giants above and by perp DEXes below. If you hold a balance on either venue, the withdrawal deadlines matter more than the commentary. Check them tonight, not in September.

BitMart@BitMartExchange

Important Notice After a careful evaluation of the Company's operating conditions, market environment, and future strategic direction, BitMart has made the difficult decision to commence an orderly wind-down of its trading platform operations. We deeply regret having to make

1:57 AM · Jul 26, 2026 · 2.89M Views

1.67K Replies · 843 Reposts · 4.16K Likes

Washington couldn’t deliver the offset. The CLARITY Act was supposed to be the counterweight to all this: clear rules, clear jurisdiction, clear runway. Instead, Trump personally met with senators and signed off on ethics provisions, and Democrats rejected them within hours. The bill needs 60 votes, which means winning over roughly seven Democrats it does not currently have, and the Senate’s recess clock is now the binding constraint. Prediction markets have cut 2026 passage odds to the mid-30s, down from above 80% in February.

DeFi kept bleeding. AFX Trade, a perp DEX on Arbitrum, lost $24.15M in USDC after attackers compromised its bridge validator keys. The contracts held. The keys didn’t. That’s the second Arbitrum perp exploit in barely a week, and the pattern is consistent: the attack surface has moved away from the smart contract and onto everything sitting next to it.

And one thing genuinely bullish. Samsung is adding native stablecoin support to Samsung Wallet, with USDC demoed on stage. There’s no launch date yet, but the distribution math is what makes this interesting: stablecoins going from an app you have to seek out to something already sitting on the phone in your pocket.

🎁 New to XTB? There’s a free Nike share on the table

XTB is handing new users a free Nike share, and the offer closes Friday, July 31. It’s a regulated broker with real equities alongside the rest of the market, so if you’ve been meaning to open an account, this is the cheapest possible week to do it.
👉 Claim your free Nike share

*Offer for new XTB clients only, subject to XTB’s terms and conditions. Investing in stocks involves risk. The value of your investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invested.

A flat week with a nervous tone. Money didn’t leave, it just stopped pressing.

• Bitcoin (BTC): around $64,700, roughly flat to slightly lower on the week after failing to hold above $66K midweek

• Ethereum (ETH): around $1,900, still 2026’s relative outperformer and defending $1,800

• XRP: around $1.10, sitting just above the $1.00 floor it has now respected for weeks

• Solana (SOL): around $75, the weakest of the majors, dragged by the AI-trade wobble in equities

• Total crypto market cap: roughly $2.2 trillion

• BTC dominance: about 56.4%

• Fear & Greed Index: 27, still in Fear, though well off June’s Extreme Fear lows

The signal underneath the flat tape: exchange outflows picked up this week, the pattern you usually see when long-term holders move coins to cold storage rather than to a sell button. Options positioning is clustered at the $65K to $70K strikes ahead of Wednesday’s Fed decision and Friday’s monthly expiry.

🏛️ CLARITY Act Stalls Despite Trump’s Personal Intervention: What Happens to Crypto Regulation Now?
Trump met senators and signed off on ethics rules. Democrats rejected them within hours. Here’s the vote math that decides the CLARITY Act’s fate.

🚪 BitMart Shuts Down: Second Major Crypto Exchange to Announce Closure in One Week
BitMart is winding down just three days after BitMEX. Here are the withdrawal deadlines, what triggered the closures, and what it means for CEX users.

📱 Samsung Puts Stablecoins in Its Wallet: What It Means for Crypto Prices
Samsung Wallet is getting native stablecoin support, with USDC demoed on stage. No launch date yet, but the distribution potential is real.

🩸 AFX Trade Hack: Arbitrum Perp DEX Loses $24M as Bridge Keys Are Compromised
AFX Trade lost $24.15M USDC after attackers compromised its bridge validator keys. The perp DEX offered the hacker a 30% bounty to return it.

⚰️ BitMEX to Shut Down All Operations on September 23 After 11 Years
BitMEX, the crypto exchange that invented the perpetual swap, is closing for good. Here’s what users need to do before the deadline.

📉 DeXe (DEXE) Crashes 85% in Hours: Rug Pull Fears Grip Traders as Token Collapses From $49 to $4
DeXe (DEXE) collapsed roughly 85% from its $48.89 peak to under $5 in hours, sparking rug pull accusations. What happened and why did DEXE crash?

This is the densest week of the month, and almost all of it lands Wednesday and Thursday.

• Monday, July 27: June durable goods orders. A quiet start, useful mainly as a read on capital spending.

• Tuesday, July 28: Consumer confidence and Case-Shiller home prices. The FOMC meeting opens.

• Wednesday, July 29: the main event. The Fed’s rate decision lands at 2:00 p.m. ET, with Chair Warsh’s press conference at 2:30. Markets are heavily positioned for a hold at 3.50% to 3.75%, a fifth straight meeting unchanged, so the reaction hinges entirely on the language rather than the number. A cautious hold could push Bitcoin back toward the $66K to $68K zone. A hawkish tilt puts $61K back in play.

• Thursday, July 30: advance Q2 GDP plus June PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, both on the same morning. Then Coinbase and Strategy report Q2 earnings after the close. Crypto-native earnings the day after a Fed decision is a volatility recipe.

• Friday, July 31: monthly BTC and ETH options and futures expiry on Deribit and CME. Month-end, quarter-adjacent, with a lot of open interest sitting near current spot. Also the last day to claim the XTB offer below.

• Running in the background: the CLARITY Act’s recess clock and whether Majority Leader Thune schedules floor time. The ECB and Bank of England also meet, which matters mostly for BTC/EUR and BTC/GBP.

⏳ Friday is the cutoff on that free share

If you scrolled past it earlier: a regulated broker plus a free Nike share to start is not a combination that stays on the table long. This one comes off Friday.
👉 Open your XTB account and claim it

The CLARITY Act needs 60 votes to clear the Senate. Roughly how many Democratic votes does that mean crypto’s market-structure bill still has to win over?

A) 3 or more
B) 7 or more
C) 12 or more
D) 20 or more

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Answer: B) 7 or more.

With the Republican caucus largely behind it, the bill still needs about seven Democrats to reach 60 and break a filibuster. Three of them, Murphy, Van Hollen and Merkley, moved in the opposite direction this week and formally opposed the merged Banking-Agriculture draft after the ethics provision was dropped. That’s the whole story of the week in Washington: the arithmetic didn’t move, and the calendar did. 🗓️

The information in this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always do your own research.