U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty said the CLARITY bill is now advancing on substance, with the main hurdle shifting from whether it can pass to whether Congress can clear internal political and procedural roadblocks. He pointed to the GENIUS bill as evidence that lawmakers can move quickly when they want to. CLARITY would set a securities-law exemption framework for digital assets that meet certain conditions, affecting tokens such as XRP that have faced ongoing disputes over whether they are securities. GENIUS is a recently signed crypto-related law that supporters cite as proof Congress can coordinate.

U.S. Rep. French Hill said on a live Fox News segment that Democrats’ “ethics” objections should not be used to block the Bitcoin Clarity Act. He argued the president has worked to meet Democrats’ requirements and said the bill would impose an exchange listing standard and disclosure obligations for assets such as meme coins. If enacted, the legislation could clarify how crypto assets are evaluated for securities status and reduce enforcement uncertainty. The bill has not yet advanced to a vote, and no specific timeline or evidence of a bipartisan breakthrough was provided.

The U.S. Congress is holding a field hearing on the Clarity Act and has formally placed the “Bitcoin Strategic Reserve” topic on the agenda. The hearing, led by the U.S. legislative body, focuses on refining the regulatory framework for crypto assets and marks the first time at the federal level that an official forum will discuss the possibility of including bitcoin in a national strategic reserve. The event does not involve any specific funding appropriation or an implementation timeline, and it does not immediately create legal effect, but it signals a shift in U.S. policy discourse toward treating bitcoin as a potential national asset rather than solely a regulatory target.

The Federal Reserve’s instant payments system, FedNow, requires participating institutions to have a Master Account to settle transactions. Ripple has received conditional approval for a Fed Master Account and is pursuing full access. That status would place it among a small number of crypto-related entities explicitly on a path toward FedNow settlement eligibility. However, conditional approval does not equal formal access, and Ripple still must complete the full regulatory review process.

A news alert said Russian investors are issuing tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on the XRP Ledger to bypass capital controls imposed in Moscow. The report frames this as an on-chain use case focused on actual fund flows, using the XRP Ledger as infrastructure for cross-border value transfer. It did not disclose the scale, participating entities, or any regulatory response, but pointed to a strengthening of the XRP Ledger’s functionality in sanctioned economies. The move does not involve changes to $XRP’s inflation or burn mechanisms, though it could increase on-chain transaction volume, fee revenue, and attention to the ecosystem.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has classified XRP as an illiquid asset under an approximately $1 price threshold, a move that increases the collateral required when XRP is used as margin. The classification implies higher haircuts for institutions posting XRP, tightening how brokers, market makers and derivatives platforms may treat it in risk controls. The post characterizes the change as a pricing signal embedded in DTCC’s collateral framework.

The European Securities and Markets Authority added 14 new firms to the MiCA crypto-asset service provider (CASP) register on July 17, 2026, taking the total to 294. Ripple Payments Europe was among the additions. The company received full CASP authorization from Luxembourg’s CSSF on July 6, granting passporting rights across all 30 EEA markets.

The Clarity Act is facing Democratic resistance in the Senate, with members declining to support the final text and boycotting a negotiating meeting with Trump. The bill previously passed the House with bipartisan votes, cleared committee and overcame objections from law enforcement as well as banking lobby pressure, but is now stalled ahead of the congressional recess over a dispute tied to ethics language. The article says the disagreement centers on a single provision and does not challenge the broader framework for regulating digital assets. XRP, XLM and HBAR are cited as U.S.-based compliant digital assets that would benefit from the legislation.