July was a calmer month than the few before it, and after the year we have had, calm is welcome.
Prices steadied after a rough few months, and I will come to those in the fund update below. The more telling part of July was not the prices but a few quiet developments in the background. A long-awaited law in the U.S. got stuck, the rules changed a little here in Australia, and one of the old pioneers bowed out. None of it is alarming once you understand it, and understanding it is what these updates are for. Let’s walk through it, and then I will answer a few questions from my inbox.
Whatever Happened to That Big Crypto Law?
If you have been waiting for the U.S. to lay down clear rules for crypto, you will have to wait a little longer. The CLARITY Act, the bill meant to settle which coins should be thought of like gold and which tokens are more like company shares, looked set to pass over the summer, but in July that timing quietly slipped again. Oddly enough, the hold-up has little to do with crypto. It is a squabble over whether senior officials, the President among them, should be allowed to make money from these assets while helping write the rules. For you it means very little in the short term. Clearer rules will come in time, but governments always take longer than expected, especially in an election year, and this is not worth losing any sleep over.
A Change to the Rules in Australia
Closer to home, something changed on the first of July worth knowing if you own any crypto here. In plain terms, the taxman’s financial watchdog now asks the big Australian crypto companies to jot down who is sending and receiving whenever coins pass from one company to another, much as your bank has quietly done with overseas transfers for years. For you it means very little. If you buy and hold through one of these companies, you might be asked for a touch more detail, and a transfer might take a few minutes longer. If you keep your coins in your own private wallet, nothing has changed. Australia is simply catching up with rules Europe, America and Japan already have, and that quiet tidying up is a comforting sign rather than a worrying one.
One of the Old Pioneers Steps Away
You may have caught a headline in late July about a crypto company called BitMEX shutting its doors, and the story behind it is quietly cheerful. BitMEX was one of the early trailblazers, having been around since 2014. After eleven years, BitMEX has decided to call it a day, with everybody getting their money back properly, so this is nothing like the messy blow-ups of years past. Lately we have watched household-name banks and brokers start offering crypto to ordinary customers, and once the familiar names turn up, some of the old pioneers find there is no longer a comfortable spot for them, so they tip their hat and step aside. Think of the corner shop that gently closes once the whole town has grown up around it. It is not a sign anything has gone wrong, but that the new thing has become ordinary and respectable, which is what we have quietly hoped for all these years.
Why Prices Have Felt Heavy
One last piece of news helps explain why crypto and gold have felt so heavy lately. At the end of July the US Federal Reserve, the body that sets American interest rates, left them unchanged for the fifth meeting running. Three of its own members wanted to raise them, worried about stubborn inflation. This matters to you more than it first appears. When a savings account or a government bond starts paying decent interest again, some people naturally shuffle money out of things that pay nothing to sit on, like gold and Bitcoin, and into something that pays a little income. That is a good part of why gold and BTC have felt so flat this year. We have seen this tide go out many times before, and it has always come back in, given a little patience.
Whatever Happened to NFTs?
A reader asked me recently whether NFTs were dead. The honest answer is that the silly part is over and the useful part is quietly growing. At the peak, people paid enormous sums for pictures of cartoon apes, which was never going to last. Think of the technology behind an NFT as simply a way to prove you actually own something. The record is kept on the blockchain, where nobody can quietly alter it, which turns out to be handy for concert tickets that cannot be faked and game items players actually own.
The bigger NFT version grew in July, as the financial world began putting ordinary assets like government bonds onto these same rails. The total value of these tokenised assets reached a record of around $32 billion, nearly triple a year ago. When the dull, reliable end of finance adopts a new technology, that says more about its future than any amount of excitement. Much is being built and little traded yet, so the plumbing is going in ahead of the water, a reason for patience rather than worry.
A Few Questions Readers Keep Asking
Rather than fill this month’s update with more news, here are three questions that land in my inbox again and again. If you have wondered about any of them, you are not alone.
Can you invest in crypto with your superannuation, 401k or retirement funds?
Yes. Crypto is volatile, which actually suits the long horizon of retirement money. We are happy to talk it through with you and your own tax specialist, and if you need a structure set up first, such as a Self-Managed Fund, an SD-IRA or a Trust, we can point you to someone who does that properly.
Is it true that crypto mining is ruining the planet and uses more power than a small country?
This one deserves a careful answer rather than a slogan. Crypto lets anyone on Earth move or invest money at any second of the day. It reaches further and works faster than traditional banking; with far fewer staff and far less power than the alternatives. The comparison people forget to make is against the enormous machinery of ordinary banking, which is a huge conglomerate and huge power user.
The energy behind Bitcoin mining is now mostly clean, with almost 60% coming from renewable sources, chiefly hydropower. Very few industries can claim to be that green. You can read the research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance here: ForkLog report and the Cambridge Digital Mining Industry Report. Closer to home, our own BostonTrading headquarters runs on solar power. We are also a majority shareholder in SolarCloud, which provides cloud-based solar panels for people who cannot fit solar panels on their own roof. We put our money where our mouth is, saving the planet and doing good.
My friend says only criminals use crypto. Is that true?
“Crypto is for criminals” is one of the most common myths, but the facts point the other way. Criminals overwhelmingly prefer cash, because cash cannot be traced. A briefcase of gold or silver serves the same purpose, though it is a good deal heavier to carry than a briefcase of banknotes.
The United Nations estimates around $2 trillion is laundered in cash every year, mostly US dollars. Illegal crypto activity is over 90% smaller, about $157 billion a year. Here is the part criminals overlook: every crypto transaction sits on a public ledger anyone can inspect, so investigators can often trace a person’s whole history from beginning to end. That is impossible with cash, which is exactly why criminals use it far more often than crypto. You can read the figures here: Chainalysis 2026 Crypto Crime Report.
Got more questions like these? Send them in to admin@bostontrading.co. The best ones end up in the newsletter, and sometimes we give prizes.
Our Fund Performance
For context, Bitcoin is down around 52% from where it began the year, and the broader market has fallen even harder, though it has clawed back about 5% lately. Through it all our funds have held up reasonably well, thanks to the oldest idea in investing: diversification. When you are not leaning on any single coin, one strong holding can carry a good deal of the weight.
Bostoncoin (BOS)
Our flagship held up better than the market around it, which is diversification doing its job. A few holdings did the heavy lifting: Ark Innovation up 114%, HyperLiquid up 153%, and Zcash up an eye-watering 1,315% from our entry. You do not need every coin to shine when one or two perform like that.
Bostoncoin price as at July 31, 2026: USD 47.69
DARTcoin
DART leaned on its stronger holdings, with Soon up 155% and Venice up 441% from where we bought in. Gains like those cushion the weakness elsewhere, which is the quiet argument for spreading your bets rather than chasing one.
DARTcoin price as at July 31, 2026: USD 87.19
POLLYcoin
Polly is the conservative fund, and she did what she was built to do, giving up less ground when the market fell. In a downturn like this, holding close to where she started is a perfectly good result.
POLLYcoin price as at July 31, 2026: USD 95.73
RAFAH
Rafah held its ground better than most crypto-heavy portfolios and stays positioned to recover when the market turns.
RAFAH price as at July 31, 2026: USD 80.43
Ashirvad
Ashirvad moved with the wider market and remains positioned to recover when crypto steadies.
Ashirvad price as at July 31, 2026: USD 80.13
Oysher
Oysher moved in step with the broader market, and patient holders remain well placed for when crypto reasserts itself.
Oysher price as at July 31, 2026: USD 79.79
What We Are Watching
September is the month to watch. The Federal Reserve meets again, and after this month’s disagreement everyone will be looking to see whether the Fed finally moves rates. The CLARITY Act may get its next chance once American lawmakers return from their summer break, though an election year rarely makes these things move faster. Beyond the headlines, the quieter work continues, with ordinary institutions steadily putting everyday assets onto crypto rails. Prices wobble in the short term, and that plumbing gets built regardless. We have watched this pattern long enough to trust it.
Our job has never been to guess every twist in the market. It is to improve the odds, manage the risk, and help you avoid expensive mistakes, which sometimes means staying patient while everyone around you loses their nerve. Spend some time with your family this month. Pat the dog. Turn the price charts off. The markets will still be there tomorrow.
Until next time,
Get rich slowly. Diversify. Breathe. Stay healthy & wealthy.
JB
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