Today in crypto, Circle’s Dante Disparte says the GENIUS Act ensures tech giants and banks can’t dominate the stablecoin market without facing strict structural and regulatory hurdles, Bitcoin social media dominance has surged which may signal a local top. Meanwhile, CoinDCX crypto exchange has been hacked for $44 million.
GENIUS Act blocks Big Tech, banks from dominating stablecoins: Circle exec
The GENIUS Act contains a little-noticed clause that prevents technology giants and Wall Street behemoths from dominating the stablecoin market, according to Circle Chief Strategy Officer Dante Disparte.
“The GENIUS Act has what I’d like to call — just for my own legacy sake — a Libra clause,” Disparte told the Unchained podcast on Saturday. Any non-bank that wants to mint a dollar-pegged token must spin up “a standalone entity that looks more like Circle and less like a bank,” clear antitrust hurdles and face a Treasury Department committee with veto power over the launch.
Banks don’t get a free pass either. Lenders that issue a stablecoin must house it in a legally separate subsidiary and keep the coins on a balance sheet that carries “no risk-taking, no leverage, no lending,” Disparte noted.
That structure is even “more conservative” than the deposit-token models JPMorgan and others have floated. “It creates clear rules that I think in the end the biggest winners are the US consumers and market participants and frankly the dollar itself,” he added.
Bitcoin 43% social chat dominance suggests ‘key entry point’ ahead
Nearly half of all crypto-related mentions on social media this week centered around Bitcoin as it hit new highs, a level of dominance that may signal a local top and a potential short-term pullback, according to sentiment platform Santiment.
“As Bitcoin’s market value crept above $123.1K for the first time in its 17+ year history, there was an equally historic social dominance spike,” Santiment analyst Brian Quinlivan said in a report on Wednesday.
“43.06% of all crypto discussions were about $BTC just as the coin’s market value was peaking,” Quinlivan added. Quinlivan said that “the sudden spike was indicative of many retail traders FOMO’ing in,” challenging the view held by several other industry participants who believe retail investors have yet to enter the market.
On July 11, Bitwise head of research André Dragosch said, Bitcoin is at new all-time highs, but retail is “almost nowhere to be found.”
CoinDCX crypto exchange hacked for $44 million
CoinDCX, a local crypto exchange in India, was hacked on Friday in a “sophisticated server breach,” according to CoinDCX founder and CEO Sumit Gupta.
The issue was isolated, and all user funds remain safe, the CEO said in a June 19 X post. The CEO released this statement:
“Today, one of our internal operational accounts — used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange — was compromised due to a sophisticated server breach. I confirm that the CoinDCX wallets used to store customer assets are not impacted and are completely safe.”
Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said that $44 million was drained through the hack and has since been transferred to wallet addresses on the Solana and Ethereum networks.
