This week’s news flow really feels like a moment we have been waiting for - crypto being adopted for its tech rails and not just speculative characteristics. Stablecoins are still the flavor of the summer - power to them if they bring us into a brave new world of efficient and transparent finance.

🪙 Markets Shrug Off Trump’s New Tariff Threat-Crypto markets barely flinched this week after Trump hinted at a fresh wave of tariffs set to kick in July 1, targeting European and Asian imports. Bitcoin and Ethereum held steady, with traders seemingly desensitized to policy posturing, at least for now. But with tariffs looming and global supply chains on edge, July could be anything but calm. (CoinDesk)

📈 XRP Outperforms - Traders Chase Key Catalysts-XRP rallied over 12% this week, outpacing broader crypto markets thanks to a trifecta of tailwinds: institutional adoption news, positive legal signals, and improving technicals. Love it or hate it, XRP continues to show that narrative plus liquidity equals volatility, and sometimes, upside. (CoinDesk)

🏠 Fannie & Freddie Ordered to Factor Crypto Into Loan Risk Assessments-In a quiet but meaningful policy shift, U.S. housing regulators have directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to assess borrower crypto holdings when evaluating mortgage applications. The move doesn’t mean holding Bitcoin gets you a better rate, but it signals that digital assets are officially on the institutional radar for creditworthiness. This is pretty major news, we say. (Reuters)

🏦 Fiserv & Tassat Launch Solana-Based Stablecoin for Bank Transfers-Did someone say Stablecoin Summer? Global payments giant Fiserv, in partnership with Tassat, is rolling out a Solana-based stablecoin solution to power real-time bank transfers. Yes, this is about speed, but also about potentially replacing SWIFT with something programmable. For a company like Fiserv to go this route says a lot about where stablecoin infrastructure is heading. (Blockworks)

🦄 Zama Becomes Crypto’s Newest Unicorn with $57M Raise- Zama, a Paris-based encryption startup, just raised $57M at a $1B valuation—becoming crypto’s latest VC-backed unicorn. They're building privacy infrastructure with fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) which lets data be processed without ever being decrypted. It’s early, but the promise is big: encrypted smart contracts and private DeFi at scale. For VCs, it signals a shift from betting on tokens to backing the privacy rails of Web3. Less speculation, more real-world use cases—we like. (Decrypt)

💸 Janus Henderson Tokenizes $1B CLO-Traditional asset manager Janus Henderson just tokenized a $1 billion collateralized loan obligation (CLO) on Provenance Blockchain, marking one of the largest on-chain debt instruments to date. For context: CLOs are the kind of opaque, structured finance vehicles that helped trigger the 2008 crisis. Now they’re getting a blockchain makeover, with better transparency, at least in theory. (Blockworks)