Prospects that the United States will pass the CLARITY Act, a crypto market structure bill, by year-end have fallen to about 40 percent, an outlook said. Democrats are making President Donald Trump’s crypto conflict-of-interest issue a point of contention, an analysis said, increasing uncertainty over the bill.

Polymarket has priced the chance of the CLARITY bill passing this year at 40 percent, Cointelegraph reported on Sunday. Democratic senators including Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen have voiced opposition. Senator Elizabeth Warren is raising conflict-of-interest concerns by demanding disclosure of Trump’s crypto earnings.

Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure document includes content saying he earned more than $1 billion last year through crypto businesses. Democrats say it would be difficult to support the bill unless it includes ethics provisions restricting elected officials from issuing and promoting cryptocurrencies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said a vote would take place before Aug. 10. Markets, however, are seeing political confrontation as the biggest variable in the bill’s passage, an assessment said. Summer Mersinger, chief executive of the Blockchain Association, described the ethics issue as "the biggest elephant in the room."

Market trading slowed. CoinGecko said spot trading volume at the top 10 centralised exchanges in the second quarter fell to $1.95 trillion from $2.7 trillion in the first quarter. Derivatives volume also fell 10 percent to $12.7 trillion, and stablecoin market capitalisation slipped 1.6 percent from the previous quarter to $305.1 billion.

Prediction markets, in contrast, grew to a record size. Second-quarter notional trading volume reached $113.8 billion, and Polymarket’s market on predicting the World Cup winner topped $3.3 billion. Contracts related to the 2028 U.S. presidential election also became one of the platform’s biggest markets. France’s regulator, however, judged Polymarket to be illegal gambling and ordered internet service providers to block access, and Polymarket is now blocked in 33 countries.

The tokenised stock market also continued to grow. Global market capitalisation hit a record high of $2.3 billion. Ethereum held the largest share at 34 percent, followed by BNB Chain and Solana. Ondo Finance was counted as the biggest issuer, holding $955 million worth of on-chain stocks.

The FTX Recovery Trust said it would pay about $900 million in a fifth creditor repayment. The amount paid to creditors so far totals about $10 billion. The U.S. Senate also adopted a resolution opposing a pardon for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, confirming bipartisan opposition.

Security threats also persisted. Consensys said it had confirmed that a developer linked to North Korea accessed some internal systems for a month through an outsourcing firm, but said there was no leak of user assets or data. Kaspersky said it had found malware dubbed OctoBot targeting crypto investors, and SlowMist warned of attacks on Web3 developers using fake LinkedIn job offers.

Coinbase's layer-2 network Base revised its strategy. Jesse Pollak acknowledged that a social-services-focused strategy had failed and said it would shift toward financial applications centred on trading and payments, AI agents and other areas.

Views were mixed on bitcoin’s short-term outlook. Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe said bitcoin held a key support line at $61,000 and is turning an important moving average into support, suggesting more momentum is approaching. He said it could rise as high as $80,000 in August if it breaks through resistance. In contrast, nichoxbt forecast the price could slip back below $60,000.