Q2 earnings reports arrive this week, alongside Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first semi-annual Congressional testimony and CPI data. Over in London, we mourn the end of Wimbledon season; hold our breath for Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final, and the FCA holds their first webinar introducing its new cryptoasset regulatory framework.
Here’s what to look out for this week:
CLARITY Act merged draft expected this week:
Senators return from their state work period on July 13, and a merged version of the CLARITY Act combining Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee texts is expected to drop this week, ahead of a Senate floor vote targeting the week of July 20. The merged bill runs more than 70 pages of new material and places heavier emphasis on consumer protections. This three-week window before the August recess is the last viable window for 2026 passage. If the bill fails here, Senator Lummis has warned it likely does not return until 2030.
Kevin Warsh’s inaugural semi-annual Congressional testimony: 14 July
Warsh delivers his first Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday at 10am ET, and the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. Markets will parse every word for signals on the rate path, his relationship with the White House, and his views on financial innovation including digital assets. The timing directly alongside CPI data makes it a double event for rate-sensitive assets.
US June CPI: 14 July
The June inflation reading drops simultaneously with bank earnings and Warsh’s House testimony. May CPI came in at 3.2%, with energy prices still elevated following the Hormuz disruptions.
Major bank earnings: 14-15 July
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup all report Tuesday before market open. Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, and BNY Mellon follow Wednesday.
Analysts project double-digit revenue growth across the group, with Goldman leading at an expected 32% year-on-year EPS increase.
Digital euro trilogue: negotiations begin this week
Following the European Parliament’s 416-169 plenary vote on July 9 authorizing talks with the Council, the digital euro trilogue officially enters its negotiation phase. This week marks the start of formal interinstitutional work between the Parliament, Council, and Commission.
WebX 2026: 13-14 July, The Prince Park Tower Tokyo
Asia’s largest Web3 conference, organized by CoinPost and attended by more than 14,000 people in 2025, returns for its 2026 edition with the theme “Connecting the Nodes Beyond the Screen.” The conference arrives as Japan’s FSA prepares to reclassify crypto assets as financial instruments under the FIEA, and SBI Holdings completes its acquisition of Bitbank.
FCA introduction to FCA’s rules and guidance: 17 July, online
The FCA is hosting a free public webinar introducing its new cryptoasset regulatory framework, ahead of the authorization application window opening in September 2026. This will cover stablecoin issuance, market abuse, prudential requirements, consumer duty, and safeguarding.
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FINTECH BUSINESS NEWS
Citi wins bank support for its tokenized deposit tools, twelve institutions signed on
Citi’s tokenized deposit infrastructure, which enables programmable commercial bank money to move 24/7 across institutional payment workflows, has secured commitments from twelve banks and financial institutions to use its tools, marking a significant expansion of Citi’s Citi Token Services from internal pilot into a multi-bank network.
The development positions Citi as a potential hub for tokenized deposit interoperability alongside SWIFT’s new blockchain ledger, with which Citi is also a launch participant.
USDC gets its federal banking home: Circle receives final OCC approval
Circle received final OCC approval to establish Circle National Trust, a federally supervised national trust bank that will initially provide fiduciary digital asset custody for Circle and its affiliates, with USDC reserve management under OCC supervision planned as a future capability. The charter does not permit Circle to accept deposits or make loans.
Shares rose 5% on the news. CEO Jeremy Allaire: “This marks a defining step in bringing blockchain technology and digital assets into the core of the US financial system.” Circle joins Coinbase and BitGo in completing the OCC trust bank path, with Ripple, Paxos, and Fidelity still at the conditional stage.
Hyundai becomes one of South Korea’s first major corporates to test stablecoin treasury transfers
Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Card completed a stablecoin remittance pilot transferring $20,000 in USDT on Avalanche between Hyundai Motor America and Hyundai Motor Mexico. The full process, including conversion from dollars into USDT, cross-border transfer, and conversion back, took approximately seven minutes versus three to four hours via traditional rails.
The pilot is positioned as one of the first major South Korean corporate tests of blockchain-based internal treasury settlement, with Hyundai evaluating whether to scale the approach across its global entity network.
OKX, MetaMask, and Matter Labs back an AI agent dispute resolution court
A 27-firm consortium led by the Genlayer Foundation launched an onchain dispute resolution system for AI agent transactions, covering payment failures, escrow disagreements, and smart contract ambiguities arising from machine-to-machine commerce where no human counterparty is available to resolve conflicts.
OKX, MetaMask, and Matter Labs are among the founding participants. The system uses AI-based arbitration with a human escalation layer, designed to give agentic commerce the same dispute resolution infrastructure that traditional e-commerce has via chargebacks and platforms.
Polymarket seeks CFTC approval to offer margin trading to US customers
Polymarket filed an application with the CFTC to offer margin trading to US users, building on its existing application to reopen its main prediction market exchange to American traders. Margin capability would allow US participants to take larger leveraged positions on outcome contracts, moving Polymarket from a binary cash-settlement platform toward a fuller derivatives venue capable of competing with Kalshi’s growing institutional product suite and Hyperliquid’s event contract market.
POLICY WATCH
CBDC ban becomes US law without Trump’s signature
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law at midnight Friday under Article I of the Constitution’s 10-day automatic enactment rule, after Trump declined to sign or veto it, carrying into law a four-year ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a CBDC or any substantially similar digital asset through December 31, 2030, with private, open, permissionless stablecoins explicitly exempted.
The bill had passed 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House, both above the two-thirds threshold required to override a veto. The Fed had said it would not issue one without explicit congressional authorization.
UK designates AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle as Critical Third Parties
HM Treasury formally designated Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Oracle as Critical Third Parties to the UK financial system on Thursday, with the Bank of England, PRA, and FCA beginning joint oversight from today, July 13.
The regime, introduced under FSMA 2023, requires designated providers to identify and manage risks to their critical services, maintain open communication with regulators during incidents, and support system-wide resilience testing. It complements but does not replace existing outsourcing rules for regulated firms.
HMT will determine any future designations; the regulators will periodically evaluate the regime’s effectiveness and make recommendations.