Weekly Options Newsletter: 12.07.2026 – 18.07.2026

July 18, 2026

Crypto Options Weekly

$64,000 Holds, Regulation Replaces Geopolitics as the Market’s North Star, and the CLARITY Act Has Three Weeks Left to Live

Bitcoin held above $63,000 through a week that contained an oil shock, geopolitical turbulence, and a July 17 Deribit options expiry — its resilience increasingly attributed to the legislative calendar rather than the macro one. The CLARITY Act’s merged Senate draft is expected to drop this week, with floor action targeted for the week of July 20 and August recess representing a hard deadline beyond which passage odds deteriorate materially. Polymarket prices 2026 passage at 48%, down from 74% a month ago. Separately, a Hyperliquid whale withdrew 7,863 ETH in what on-chain analysts flagged as continued ETH pressure. BitMine bought 20,500 ETH from Galaxy Digital. And 15 of the world’s largest banks confirmed they are actively building tokenised finance on private blockchains — a structural adoption signal that operates entirely independently of the legislative calendar.

WEEK AT A GLANCE

Bitcoin (BTC): ~$63,350–$64,200 (holding key resistance; RSI above 50; Stochastic at 85 overbought)
Ethereum (ETH): ~$1,750–$1,805 (ETH/BTC ratio approaching 100-day SMA — key inflection test)
BTC Weekly Gain (July 10): +2.8% seven-day; +~11% since June 30 close
ETH Weekly Gain (July 10): +2.7% seven-day
BTC Dominance: 56.3% (declining; capital rotating toward alts)
Fear & Greed Index: 27 (Fear; recovering from Extreme Fear)
July 17 Deribit Expiry: Key weekly settlement — BTC holding above strike concentrations
BTC Options — Put/Call Skew: One-week 25-delta skew ~16%; puts still trading at premium to calls
Long Call Condor (July 17 expiry): Institutional position at $64K/$66K/$68K/$70K strikes observed
CLARITY Act merged draft: Expected to drop week of July 14; Senate floor action targeted week of July 20
CLARITY Act passage odds: Polymarket 48% (down from 74% one month ago); Galaxy Research ~60%
CLARITY Act hard deadline: August recess — missing it causes prospects to “deteriorate materially” per Stifel
Revised CLARITY July 17 hearing: House Financial Services Committee field hearing, New York
ETH/BTC ratio: Approaching 100-day SMA — prior rallies have failed at this level since December
BitMine: Bought 20,500 ETH from Galaxy Digital
Hyperliquid whale: Withdrew 7,863 ETH — flagged as continued ETH selling pressure
Major banks: 15 of the world’s largest confirmed building tokenised finance on private blockchains
Bitget Wallet: Crossed 100 million users globally; daily payment users now outnumber traders
Bitwise strategist: Described current Bitcoin bear market as structurally different due to institutional adoption
Fannie Mae crypto mortgage: Better and Coinbase issued first Fannie Mae-backed crypto mortgage in Michigan
Fannie Mae / FHFA: Ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to count cryptocurrency as asset for mortgages
Stripe subsidiary Privy: Partnered with Solana infrastructure firm Jito Labs
MiCA 2 consultation: Open until August 31; DeFi, stablecoin yield, staking under review

PRICE ACTION: Regulation Is the New Geopolitics

The shift that crypto analysts have been anticipating for months completed itself this week: regulation, not geopolitics, is now the dominant price driver for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin and Ethereum price have held relatively resilient despite ongoing global tensions, with investors increasingly believing clearer rules could encourage fresh institutional capital, especially if Congress finally delivers long-awaited market structure legislation.

Bitcoin is holding above $63,000 for the second consecutive week, with the daily RSI sustaining above the 50 level — a technical threshold that has historically marked the transition from corrective to recovery structure. The Stochastic Oscillator at 85 is technically overbought, flagging potential short-term selling pressure near the $64,200 resistance level that the market has been testing. A break above $64,200 could see Bitcoin retest the $67,800 mark in the near term — a level that would confirm the corrective structure from the June lows has fully resolved.

Ethereum’s most important development this week was not price but ratio. The ETH/BTC ratio is rising again and fast approaching its 100-day simple moving average — since December, the ratio’s recovery rallies have run into strong selling pressure around that level. Whether ETH can establish a foothold above the 100-day SMA is the clearest available signal of a potential bottom and bullish turnaround in ETH relative to Bitcoin. Three consecutive failures at this level since December make the current approach the most closely watched ratio test of the year.

The Hyperliquid whale withdrawal of 7,863 ETH and the broader ETH selling pressure from on-chain sources adds complexity to the ETH recovery thesis. A Hyperliquid whale suspected of continuing Ether sell-off after withdrawing 7,863 ETH represents a known overhead supply source that the market has been digesting. Against it, BitMine’s purchase of 20,500 ETH from Galaxy Digital is the structural counterpoint — corporate treasury accumulation against on-chain whale distribution, the divergence that has characterised every ETH corrective bottom in prior cycles.

The week’s most important macro price observation is that Bitcoin absorbed an oil shock, bond selloff, and the July 17 Deribit expiry without losing the $63,000 level. That absorption capacity — holding support through three simultaneous pressures — is a stronger structural signal than any individual rally.

Key Levels:

BTC: $64,200 as the near-term resistance above which $67,800 opens; $63,000 as the defended support floor; $60,000 as the structural backstop
ETH: $1,848–$1,889 as the immediate resistance zone; $1,700 as current support; ETH/BTC 100-day SMA as the ratio level that changes the narrative if ETH closes above it

OPTIONS MARKET: Caution Persists, But Institutions Are Positioning

The options market this week confirmed the same nuanced picture the price action is telling. Put options continue to trade at a premium to calls, or bullish contracts. Bitcoin’s one-week, 25-delta put-call skew was around 16% — the defensive positioning that has characterised the derivatives market throughout the recovery has not yet resolved, even as spot prices hold above $63,000.

The most analytically interesting options flow of the week was an institutional structured trade on the July 17 expiry: a long call condor on BTC, involving long positions in July 17 expiry calls at the $64,000 and $70,000 strikes and short positions in the same expiry calls at $66,000 and $68,000. The condor structure is a defined-risk, limited-reward strategy that profits if BTC settles between $64,000 and $70,000 at expiry — a directional bet on range-bound recovery rather than breakout, constructed by an institutional participant with enough size to move the options tape. The July 17 settlement resolved with BTC holding in the lower half of that range, paying out the condor’s lower leg participants.

The persistence of put premium despite two weeks of positive price action tells a consistent story: institutions are adding exposure but hedging it. The configuration of buying spot or calls while maintaining put protection is the classic accumulation-under-uncertainty posture that characterises the early phase of institutional re-engagement. It is not the same as conviction — conviction removes the puts — but it is structurally more constructive than the pure defensive positioning of May and June.

The July 28–29 FOMC is now the next major vol event. A Warsh signal toward a September cut would compress put premium as the macro overhang lifts. A hawkish surprise would expand it. The options market is pricing neither scenario with conviction, maintaining elevated front-end put skew as a hedge against both outcomes.

REGULATORY DEVELOPMENTS: The CLARITY Act’s Final Window

The Senate’s crypto market structure bill is moving into what may be its last viable window for 2026, with advocates expecting a new draft of the Clarity Act as soon as next week. The updated text would merge work from the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees, bringing together the two tracks that have shaped the chamber’s approach to digital asset regulation.

Brian Gardner of Stifel wrote that the bill “probably needs to get through the Senate by the end of July” and that missing August recess would cause prospects to “deteriorate materially.” Beacon Policy Advisors characterized a miss as potentially ending the 2026 path entirely. Galaxy Digital placed a $10 million institutional prediction market trade on 2026 passage and has revised its own estimated odds downward to approximately 60%. Polymarket prices 2026 passage at 48%, down from 74% a month ago.

The three-week window — three weeks in July before one week in August before election season consumes the chamber — is the most compressed legislative timeline that a bill of this complexity has ever faced. The merged text combines the Senate Banking Committee version (which passed 15-9 on May 14) with the Agriculture Committee’s companion measure (which passed on strictly partisan lines and required the most reworking). Democrats will need to buy into the new draft, which would need 60 votes to advance out of the Senate — the main sticking point that remains is an ethics provision.

Section 404 — the stablecoin yield provision — remains contested. The bill’s most consequential market-facing dispute centers on Section 404, which prohibits digital asset service providers from paying interest or yield solely for holding a payment stablecoin, while preserving activity-based rewards. Six banking trade groups including the American Bankers Association called the language insufficient at the May 14 vote, warning that stablecoin offerings would draw deposits away from banks. The banking lobby’s continued resistance to the stablecoin provisions — combined with the Democratic ethics demand — means the merged text must thread a needle between three separate objection sets simultaneously.

The practical consequence for markets: Polymarket’s 48% passage odds represent the most pessimistic market consensus on CLARITY in 2026, and the bill trading below 50% for the first time means institutional positioning that had been building on anticipated passage is now unwinding. The CoinShares flow correlation — documented throughout this year — suggests that passage odds declining from 74% to 48% in a month corresponds to meaningful institutional outflow pressure, independent of macro conditions.

For European readers tracking both MiCA and U.S. legislation: MiCA is the regulatory template the world is copying, with the UK’s stablecoin framework and the U.S. GENIUS Act both drawing from its architecture. The CLARITY Act, if passed, would create a complementary framework — but MiCA’s July 1 enforcement date means Europe already has its answer while the U.S. is still debating the question.

INSTITUTIONAL ACTIVITY: 15 Major Banks Are Building, Fannie Mae Accepts Crypto

The most structurally significant institutional signal of the week came not from an ETF flow or a corporate treasury announcement but from a single data point in the ZebPay weekly report: more than 15 of the world’s largest banks are building tokenised finance on private blockchains. The number — 15 of the world’s largest — is the largest confirmed bank-level blockchain buildout reported in a single data point in 2026, and it operates entirely independently of the CLARITY Act legislative calendar or the MiCA compliance deadline.

Banks building tokenised finance infrastructure are not waiting for retail crypto markets to resolve their regulatory questions. They are constructing the settlement, custody, and asset management rails that will be used when those questions are answered. The 15-bank figure suggests the institutional infrastructure phase of adoption is significantly more advanced than public price action or ETF flow data implies.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received direction from the Federal Housing Finance Agency to count cryptocurrency as an asset for mortgages — and the first Fannie Mae-backed crypto mortgage has already been issued, to a couple in Ann Arbor, Michigan, through Better and Coinbase. The practical implication is that crypto holdings can now function as collateral in the world’s largest mortgage market — a structural change in how Bitcoin and ETH are treated as balance-sheet assets for American homeowners, and a direct pathway for crypto wealth to participate in traditional financial activity without liquidation.

Bitget Wallet crossed 100 million users globally, with daily payment users now outnumbering traders — a milestone that signals a structural shift within Bitget’s user base from speculation-oriented activity toward utility-oriented use. When payment users outnumber traders on a crypto wallet, the asset class is functioning as financial infrastructure rather than purely as a speculative vehicle.

BitMine’s purchase of 20,500 ETH from Galaxy Digital at current prices is the clearest corporate conviction signal in the ETH market this week — a counter-trade to the Hyperliquid whale selling, executed by a public company that has been consistently accumulating ETH through the correction. The divergence between corporate treasury buyers and on-chain whale sellers is the structural tension that will resolve the ETH/BTC ratio test described in the price action section.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS: MiCA Week Two, and the Mortgage That Changed the Framework

MiCA’s second week of enforcement produced the first visible signs of market consolidation flowing to licensed exchanges. OKX reported continued user migration inflows from the Binance suspension. Kraken published updated EU user acquisition data confirming that the licensed perimeter is absorbing displaced users at a pace ahead of internal projections.

The MiCA 2 consultation approaching its August 31 deadline is attracting increasing formal engagement from non-EU jurisdictions. Singapore’s MAS, South Korea’s FSC, and Japan’s FSA have all published internal review documents examining MiCA’s DeFi gatekeeper model and stablecoin yield provisions. The pattern suggests that MiCA 2’s outcomes will not only reshape European crypto markets but will directly influence regulatory drafting in three of the four largest Asian financial centres simultaneously.

The Fannie Mae crypto mortgage development has direct international implications. Japan’s crypto-as-financial-instruments bill — which reclassifies digital assets as financial instruments for the purposes of Japanese law — is expected to clear the upper house imminently. If the Japanese framework follows Fannie Mae’s lead and allows crypto holdings to be treated as qualifying balance-sheet assets, the pathway for crypto wealth to participate in traditional financial activity widens significantly across the world’s third-largest economy.

Stripe subsidiary Privy’s partnership with Solana infrastructure firm Jito Labs adds another layer to the global payment infrastructure build. Stripe’s integration of crypto payment rails — already active in more than 100 countries — deepens when Jito’s MEV-aware infrastructure is embedded into Privy’s wallet technology. For emerging markets where Stripe processes significant payment volume, the Jito integration reduces the friction between stablecoin-denominated payments and blockchain settlement — a use case that is most commercially important in markets where the dollar is the de facto trading currency but traditional banking infrastructure is limited.

MACRO CONTEXT: Three Weeks to FOMC, and the Jobs Market Is Cooperating

The June jobs miss — 57,000 vs. 115,000 expected — established the data foundation for a September rate-cut signal. The question heading into the July 28–29 FOMC is whether Warsh uses the meeting to lay the groundwork for September, or maintains the zero-cut posture of his June debut.

The case for Warsh signalling at July is straightforward: two consecutive weak jobs reports would be the strongest consecutive labour market signal since 2020. If July jobs data (released August 1) confirms the June miss, the September FOMC becomes the first meeting where a cut is the base case rather than a tail scenario. Warsh signalling at July — before the July jobs data — would be a pre-emptive pivot that carries political risk but would be immediately positive for risk assets.

The case against is equally clear: with CLARITY Act passage odds at 48% and the ethics provision unresolved, the legislative uncertainty hanging over crypto markets reduces the transmission of a dovish Fed signal into ETF inflows. Rate-cut anticipation drives institutional crypto buying when the regulatory framework is clear enough to deploy capital confidently. With CLARITY below 50%, some institutional allocators may wait for legislative resolution before responding to macro relief.

The convergence of the CLARITY Act floor vote window (week of July 20) and the FOMC meeting (July 28–29) makes the next 10 days the most concentrated policy event cluster of the year for crypto markets. Both events resolving positively — merged CLARITY text attracting 60 votes, Warsh signalling September — would be the macro catalyst that turns the current bounce into the beginning of a sustained recovery.

FORWARD LOOK: What to Watch This Week

→ CLARITY Act merged draft release: CoinDesk sources indicated the merged Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee text could drop as early as this week. The content of Section 404 on stablecoin yield — and whether the ethics provision has been resolved — will determine whether Democratic senators can support the bill. Watch the text on release; the market will price it within hours.

→ Senate floor scheduling for week of July 20: If Majority Leader Schumer schedules floor debate, the 60-vote cloture threshold becomes the most important market event in weeks. Seven Democratic crossover votes needed — watch Senators Gallego, Alsobrooks, and Warner as the most likely swing votes.

→ ETH/BTC ratio 100-day SMA test: Three previous rallies have failed at this level since December. A confirmed close above the 100-day SMA would be the strongest ETH signal of 2026 and would likely trigger a wave of ETH ETF inflows that have been waiting for exactly this technical confirmation.

→ July 28–29 FOMC: Warsh’s second meeting as Fed Chair. The jobs miss gives him data cover to soften language. Watch for any change in the easing bias framework — even a subtle shift from “no cuts” to “data-dependent on September” would move crypto ETF flows immediately.

→ MiCA 2 consultation formal submissions: The August 31 deadline is six weeks away. Circle’s formal submission on the stablecoin yield prohibition is the most commercially significant response to watch. Any indication that the Commission is receptive to relaxing the yield ban would immediately benefit euro stablecoin issuers and reshape the competitive dynamic that USDT’s absence has created.

→ ETH corporate treasury divergence: BitMine’s 20,500 ETH purchase against the Hyperliquid whale’s 7,863 ETH withdrawal is the most visible expression of the accumulation-vs-distribution tension in ETH markets. Watch for additional corporate treasury disclosures or further whale outflows as the data that resolves this divergence.

Crypto Options Weekly is an independent market intelligence newsletter. Nothing herein constitutes financial advice. Data sourced from Deribit, CoinDesk, CryptoSlate, Yahoo Finance, ZebPay, Investing News Network, CryptoNews, CoinGape, CryptoGabbar, Farside Investors, Galaxy Research, Polymarket, Stifel Research, and public filings. All figures approximate as of Friday, July 16, 2026. Past performance is not indicative of future results.