[News Brief] Jul 14, morning | Bitcoin Remains Weak Amid Fears of a U.S.-Iran Conflict

As concerns over a possible conflict between the United States and Iran intensified, selling pressure spread across risk assets, and Bitcoin at one point approached the $62,000 level.

According to Odaily, BTC/USD continued its weak trend. JDK Analysis said Bitcoin’s current price action looks extremely fragile, adding that large short positioning is betting on further downside, making the $60,000 range a key level for the market to watch again.

However, if new spot buying flows in and key support levels hold, short positions could instead come under pressure. Trader Roman said some technical indicators, including the RSI and trading volume, suggest downside momentum may weaken, leaving room for Bitcoin to rebound toward the $70,000-$75,000 range.

According to Odaily, Rezai, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said on the 14th, “The memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States no longer exists, and the enemy has officially entered a state of war.”

The remarks came amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, drawing attention to the possibility of expanding geopolitical risk in the Middle East.

Watcher.Guru reported that U.S. inflation slowed to 3.5%, coming in below market expectations.

Easing inflation could affect expectations for Federal Reserve policy and, in turn, investor sentiment toward risk assets.

Japan’s largest card payment network, JCB, has partnered with Circle to explore using USDC for cross-border payments and merchant transactions.

According to Odaily, JCB will first conduct a proof of concept for internal fund transfers. The partnership is aimed at improving payment efficiency while reducing remittance costs and foreign exchange burdens for tourists.

Japan has already been seeing broader moves toward stablecoin adoption, with Lawson convenience stores also set to begin testing yen-denominated stablecoin payments in August.

Pete Rizzo said on X that South Korea is expected to move soon toward launching a spot Bitcoin ETF.

He pointed to the size of South Korea’s economy and raised expectations for capital inflows from Asia. However, he did not mention details such as a specific approval timeline, target asset managers, or listing exchanges.

A spot Bitcoin ETF allows institutional and retail investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin’s price without directly holding the asset, and approval could affect market liquidity.

UK tax authorities have recognized crypto lending and liquidity pool transactions as “no gain, no loss” events, Odaily reported.

As a result, capital gains tax on such transactions will be deferred until an actual disposal occurs. The policy is scheduled to take effect in April 2027 and is expected to affect about 700,000 people.

Robinhood Chain recorded about $3.1 billion in decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume in its first week after launch, Odaily reported, citing The Block.

According to Bernstein data, Robinhood Chain has become one of the top five blockchain networks by trading volume. Since its launch on July 1, it has attracted more than 65,000 users, and the amount of stablecoins held on the chain has reached about $300 million.

In addition, around $13 million worth of tokenized stock assets have been deployed on Robinhood Chain. The performance comes as Robinhood accelerates the expansion of tokenized assets and on-chain trading infrastructure.

According to Odaily, citing on-chain analyst monitoring by Wei Jin, a whale converted all of its remaining ETH into BTC.

The whale sold 30,139 ETH to acquire 859 BTC, in a transaction worth $54.09 million.

The implied ETH/BTC exchange rate at the time of sale was 0.0285. The trade is being interpreted as a bet on BTC outperformance versus ETH.

According to Odaily, Onchain Lens said a Circle address minted about 750 million additional USDC on the Solana network.

With that, Circle has minted a cumulative total of about 68.26 billion USDC on Solana so far in 2026.

Growth in USDC issuance is used as an indicator of trading activity and liquidity flows on Solana.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Senate leadership to reflect public official ethics provisions in the CLARITY Act.

According to Odaily, Warren said the bill should include a ban on public officials and their families profiting from the crypto industry.

The CLARITY Act is intended to organize market structure and regulatory authority for the U.S. digital asset market, and conflict-of-interest prevention has emerged as a key issue in Senate discussions.