Top 5 Crypto News This Week: Bitcoin in 401(k)s, Ripple–SEC Settlement, Tornado Cash Verdict, Base Outage, Howells’ INI Plan

1) Executive Push to Allow Bitcoin in U.S. 401(k)s

A new executive order directs the U.S. Department of Labor, SEC, and Treasury to craft guidance enabling cryptocurrency allocations inside tax-advantaged retirement plans (401(k)s) — a market near $12.5T. The initiative lowers policy friction for plan sponsors and record-keepers, historically wary of alternative assets.

• What changes: Agencies are tasked with road-mapping compliant crypto exposure in 401(k)s.
• Why it matters: Even low-single-digit portfolio allocations could translate into meaningful flows for Bitcoin and large-cap crypto.
• Risks: Fiduciary liability, volatility management, and product-level due diligence will be central hurdles.

2) Ripple and SEC End Their Four-Year Legal Fight

Ripple Labs and the SEC have withdrawn appeals, closing the XRP lawsuit. A court-accepted settlement includes a reported $125M penalty. XRP rallied on the news as legal overhang eased.

• Market lens: Removal of litigation tail risk is supportive for XRP liquidity and listings.
• Watch level: Traders are eyeing higher resistance zones; sentiment hinges on follow-through volume and broader risk appetite.

3) James Howells Shelves Landfill Hunt, Eyes INI Token Claim

James Howells — known for losing a hard drive with 8,000 BTC — plans to tokenize a claim to those coins via Ceiniog Coin (INI), a Layer-2 token with an ICO targeted for October 2025. The approach leans on court-recognized ownership assertions; an earlier Ordinals idea was dropped.

• Structure: INI would represent a verifiable claim, not custody of the BTC itself.
• Key risks: Enforcement uncertainty, secondary-market dynamics, legal jurisdiction, and execution risk on recovery.

4) Tornado Cash Co-Founder Roman Storm Convicted on Transmission Count

In New York, Roman Storm was found guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmission business. Money-laundering and sanctions-evasion counts were dismissed; a new trial remains possible. The verdict sharpened debate over how far liability can extend to open-source developers in DeFi.

• Policy signal: Elevated compliance expectations for privacy tooling, mixers, and non-custodial interfaces.
• Ecosystem impact: Developers may increase jurisdictional and compliance planning; projects may harden controls around routing and sanctions exposure.

5) Coinbase’s Base L2 Saw a 19-Minute Outage

On August 5, Base halted block production for 19 minutes (from block 33,792,704), citing infrastructure upgrades. Coinbase reported user funds were safe. The incident comes as Base expands aggressively, with daily token launches reportedly exceeding 54,000, outpacing Solana by count.

• Reliability lens: Short outages on fast-growing L2s highlight operational complexity and monitoring needs for dApp teams.
• Builder takeaway: Consider graceful-degradation patterns, multi-RPC redundancy, and incident runbooks.

Market Impact — Quick Snapshot

• Bitcoin (policy flow): Retirement-account access could broaden institutional participation over time; implementation will drive the pace.
• XRP (litigation overhang): Settlement supports risk-on behavior; sustained trend needs volume confirmation.
• DeFi (policy risk): The Tornado Cash verdict raises developer-liability questions; expect tighter design and compliance patterns.
• L2s (resilience): Base outage underscores infra scaling trade-offs; uptime and incident comms remain differentiators.
• Speculative narratives: Tokenized claims like INI are headline-friendly but hinge on legal enforceability and execution.