This week from Asia

Three things actually mattered in crypto this week, and you can get all of them before your coffee goes cold. Full deep-dives linked under each if you want the rabbit hole. Let's go. 👇

The 30-second version

• The US still can't pass its big crypto bill. Asia already did.
• $100M+ walked out of "the safest" Bitcoin wallets, and nobody touched a device.
• The US spent billions saving Japan's currency, because it was quietly saving itself.

🏛️ 1. America's crypto bill choked. Again.

The CLARITY Act, the law that would finally decide what every token legally is, won't get a Senate vote until September, and its odds of passing this year have slid to around 30%. What tripped it up? Not crypto. It's a fight over whether the President should be allowed to profit off crypto, after Trump booked roughly $1.4 billion of crypto income last year. Awkward.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Singapore already shipped the rulebook Washington keeps arguing about.

Why you care: stop waiting on US "clarity" this year. The action is out here.

→ Read the full breakdown: "The US Can't Pass Its Big Crypto Bill. Asia Already Shipped One."

🧊 2. The "safest" wallet lost $100M+.

A five-year-old bug in the Coldcard hardware wallet made its "random" keys guessable, and since July 30 attackers have been brute-forcing them from their own computers, to the tune of $116 million and counting. No phishing. No stolen devices. Just math.

Good news: Bitcoin itself is fine, this was one vendor's mistake. Bad news: if you or a friend used an older Coldcard without an extra passphrase, those coins need to move today. And the scary undertone is that AI made this old code cheap to crack.

Why you care: "cold storage" doesn't mean "can't be robbed."

→ Read the full breakdown: "Your Hardware Wallet Had One Job."

🇯🇵 3. The US bailed out its own banker.

The US and Japan bought yen together last week for the first time since 1998. Sounds like a favour to an ally. It was self-defence. Japan holds $1.2 trillion of US debt, and America needed to stop it from dumping those bonds and spiking US interest rates.

The bigger story underneath: after 30 years, Japan is pulling its money home, and a big chunk of that money quietly props up global markets, crypto included.

Why you care: watch the yen. A slow climb is fine. A sudden spike is the carry-trade unwind that nuked crypto in August 2024, and in Asia, you feel it first.

→ Read the full breakdown: "Japan Wants Its Money Back."

Zoom out

Notice the thread. A bill the US can't pass. A wallet that wasn't safe. Money leaving America to go home to Japan. Three different stories, one question underneath all of them: where does capital feel safe?

And the answer, quietly, keeps pointing east. While the West argues, patches and props things up, Asia is busy writing the rules and building the rails. That's the whole thesis of this publication, and this week wrote it for us.

That's your week. If you bookmark one, make it #3, because the yen is the tell for everything else. And if someone you know still swears their old Coldcard is fine, forward them #2. Might save their stack.

See you next Sunday.

Market intelligence for independent decisions, not financial advice.