The market this morning

Crypto majors fall as Russia clears 17 exchangers and JPMorgan weighs the Clarity Act setback

By Crypto Info News

Good morning. Large-cap crypto closed Thursday lower across the board. Bitcoin fell 3.28% over 24 hours to $81,328.21, with a market capitalisation of $1.63 trillion. Ether dropped 3.49% to $2,386.48. XRP fell 4.18% to $1.31 and BNB fell 2.09% to $730.43. The dollar-pegged stablecoins held close to par: Tether at $0.9989 and USD Coin at $0.9995.

The day's most consequential policy move came from Moscow. DL News reported that Russia's central bank has cleared 17 crypto exchangers, including Sberbank and VTB, with both banks readying retail crypto trading by 1 December.

In Washington, the regulatory picture stayed unsettled. The Block reported that JPMorgan said actions by U.S. regulators partly offset the setback of the failed Clarity Act, while adding that longer-lasting rules are still needed. The Block separately reported that the Blockchain Association is urging Congress to pass legislation resolving tax uncertainty as the broader bill stalls. CoinDesk reported that Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the investigations subcommittee, has added a probe of Tether payments to the firm of former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines to his list of interests. Cointelegraph reported a Winklevoss-founded PAC making an $81,000 ad buy in the Texas Senate race.

Litigation and enforcement featured too. Cointelegraph reported that a Circle shareholder has sued President Trump, World Liberty Financial and Steve Witkoff, alleging that USD1 harmed USDC's ability to compete; the claims are those of the plaintiff. Decrypt reported that the Central Bank of Ireland penalised Coinbase Ireland €3,252,618 over fund safeguarding, the second penalty against the exchange's European arm in a year.

On the industry side, Decrypt and CoinDesk both reported that Andreessen Horowitz is renaming its crypto fund a16z Frontier and widening its scope to AI, autonomous machines and biology. DL News reported Securitize stock down 38% since it launched tokenised Apple, Nvidia and Tesla shares on Solana. Cointelegraph reported Dune launching real-time data feeds covering 200 onchain trading venues, Underdog tapping Zerohash for crypto deposits later this year, and, citing BlocksBridge, Bitcoin's mining difficulty rising to a seven-month hashrate high despite the industry's AI shift.

What to watch: Russia's 1 December retail launch, movement on U.S. tax and market-structure legislation, and the Irish and Senate proceedings.