[News Brief] Aug 5, morning | BlackRock Launches Stablecoin Reserve Fund and Begins On-Chain Treasury Operations

U.S. Senate Democrats plan to block the cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, citing a deadlock in ethics negotiations.

As a result, the bill is increasingly unlikely to secure the 60 votes needed before the August 7 recess. Punchbowl News reported that Democrats do not intend to provide the votes required for cloture. The lack of meaningful progress in the related ethics talks was cited as the reason. A cloture vote is the procedural step required to end debate on a bill and move to a final vote. In the U.S. Senate, 60 votes are required for it to pass.

BlackRock has launched the stablecoin reserve fund BRSRV and will place short-term U.S. Treasuries on the Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), and Tempo blockchains.

Odaily reported that BRSRV will manage short-term U.S. Treasuries used as reserve assets for stablecoins on-chain. BlackRock’s new product is structured to connect tokenized Treasuries with stablecoin reserve infrastructure.

Brazilian crypto asset manager Hashdex will close and liquidate its U.S. spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF.

The ETF is reported to still hold 225 BTC. Hashdex filed the relevant documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on August 3, according to BlockTempo. BlockTempo also reported that, alongside the ETF liquidation, investor funds have been shifting toward AI-themed investments.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a comprehensive digital currency regulatory law.

The key provisions will take effect on September 1. TechFlow reported that the new law contains measures that will alter the direction of Russia’s cryptocurrency regulation.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) will establish a dedicated department for virtual assets and stablecoins.

The new department will begin operations on the 7th. Foresight News reported that the new organization will be called the “Virtual Assets and Stablecoins Department.”

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will phase in the Travel Rule for asset transfers by virtual asset service providers (VASPs) starting in October 2026.

For transfers of more than TWD 30,000 per transaction, the sender must provide the customer’s date of birth and address along with basic transaction information. The rule will first apply to transfers between VASPs within Taiwan, and the receiving provider will verify the customer’s identity using the transmitted information. Transfers involving wallet addresses at VASPs outside Taiwan will be subject to the rule by the end of 2027, according to Yahoo Finance. Businesses that fail to incorporate the procedures into their internal control systems or fail to fulfill information transmission obligations may face fines ranging from TWD 500,000 to TWD 10 million under Taiwan’s Anti-Money Laundering Act.

Bybit’s Austrian payments subsidiary has obtained an electronic money license.

The company will now be able to expand payment services in the European Union (EU). Cointelegraph reported that the regulatory approval enables Bybit to develop card payment and merchant payment services. Its business scope also includes open banking and peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services.

Nigeria has approved the issuance of tokenized assets to promote capital market growth.

Odaily reported that Nigeria has opened the relevant authority and approved the issuance of tokenized assets.

Losses suffered by Bitcoin (BTC) holders due to a key-generation vulnerability in COLDCARD wallets have exceeded $100 million (about KRW 143 billion).

Insufficient randomness in the wallet’s seed-generation process was identified as the cause. Decrypt reported that some COLDCARD wallets generated seeds from a more limited set of combinations than expected, allowing attackers to test possible combinations and recover private keys. A seed is the basis from which all of a wallet’s private keys are derived, so exposure can grant access to funds. Entropy refers to the amount of randomness that makes a seed difficult to predict and is measured in bits. The lower the entropy, the fewer combinations an attacker needs to check. The incident has reignited debate over whether users should trust a device’s internal random number generator or add randomness themselves using methods such as dice rolls. COLDCARD provides a feature that allows dice rolls to be added to seed generation or to fully replace the device’s random number generation method.

Reports say the United States, Iran, and Oman are close to a 60-day interim agreement regarding the Strait of Hormuz.

BlockBeats reported on the 5th that the three countries were nearing an interim agreement.