Morning Minute is a daily newsletter authored by Tyler Warner. The views and insights shared are his own and may not represent those of Decrypt.
Good morning!
Here are the main highlights for today:
- Leading cryptocurrencies are mostly down, with HYPE gaining; Bitcoin at $63.4k
- Bitcoin’s spot trading volume has dropped to a seven-year low
- Goldman Sachs has acquired a Bitcoin income ETF in a $2.25B deal with NEOS
- Solana narrowly avoided a major outage due to a routing issue
- Hyperliquid has introduced new features for managing tokenized stocks, including splits and dividends
🏛️ SEC Aims to Establish an Onchain Stock Market Without Legislative Approval
The SEC is poised to take initiatives that Congress has yet to address.
According to Bloomberg, the SEC is set to unveil two new crypto initiatives soon, while the CLARITY Act remains stalled until at least September. The first initiative is a Friday open meeting to propose “Regulation Crypto,” a framework allowing projects to raise funds through token sales without needing full securities registration. The second, more significant initiative for onchain markets, involves an “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, with more details likely to be released on Friday.
This exemption would permit tokenized versions of stocks like Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia to trade on blockchains continuously, in fractional amounts, with nearly instantaneous settlement. These tokens typically reflect a stock’s economic exposure but do not include voting or dividend rights (although some protocols are working on addressing these rights), which is why they receive lighter regulatory scrutiny. This initiative aligns with Chair Paul Atkins’ “Project Crypto” agenda.
This development is central to the year's most significant growth narrative in onchain markets. Tokenized stocks have fueled the growth of Robinhood Chain, which saw a fivefold increase in RWA volume this summer, and has been a major focus for Solana and Base. The NYSE is creating its onchain settlement platform, BlackRock has launched tokenized funds on Solana and Ethereum, and Circle’s Arc has secured BlackRock, Visa, and Mastercard as validators. Much of this activity has occurred in a regulatory gray area, often targeting non-US users. A formal SEC exemption would provide the legal clarity needed for this movement, potentially allowing U.S. retail investors access to the products these platforms were designed to offer.
If these measures proceed as anticipated, it could mark one of the most positive developments for the crypto sector in years. The RWA framework would receive full endorsement, amplifying growth targets for tokenized assets. We hope this opportunity is not squandered…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
- Major cryptocurrencies are mostly down, with HYPE leading; BTC -1% at $63.4k; ETH -1% at $1,880; SOL -1% at $75.60; HYPE +4% at $57.30
- Top altcoin gainers include OKB (+7%), MNT (+6%), and Virtual (+5%)
- Oil -2% at $81; Gold -0.5% at $4,450
- Stock futures are slightly positive; DOW steady, Nasdaq +0.5%
- Bitcoin spot volume has fallen to its lowest level since 2019, as the market hovers between key cost-basis levels, with seller exhaustion increasing while spot demand remains weak
- A routing bug nearly caused Solana to lose finality, after a misconfigured route from one hosting provider caused 28.83% of staked SOL to go offline, leaving the chain just 4.51 points above the 33.34% freeze threshold
- Goldman Sachs finalized a $2.25 billion NEOS deal, acquiring the covered-call fund BTCI along with NEOS’s approximately $30 billion in options-based products
- Bitwise has laid off 14% of its workforce as the crypto downturn impacts ETF issuers, reducing its staff from 180 to around 155
- Following a hack of Coldcard, $15 billion in Bitcoin was transferred to safety, with 233,000 BTC leaving long-term-holder wallets in the days surrounding the breach
- An XRP Ledger bridge was exploited after its software misidentified fake deposits as legitimate, allowing an attacker to mint unsupported balances and withdraw nearly 200,000 XRP (around $202,000) from the Tx bridge via a flaw that had passed multiple audits
Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
- The Bitcoin ETFs experienced $61M in net outflows on Wednesday, while ETH ETFs saw inflows of $7.4M
Meme Coin Tracker
- Leading meme coins were mostly down; DOGE -3%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -5%, PENGU -1%, TRUMP -6%, BONK +2%
- The Robinhood chain was led by Pack (+90%), Yolo (+60%), and Frong (+30%); Stonkbrokers saw its largest selloff to date (-27%)
- Solana's top performers included Ava (+40%), momota (+180%), and XST (+33%)
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
- Hyperliquid is introducing a "scaleWei" function that will enable tokenized stocks to manage corporate actions onchain, such as stock splits, dividends, and spin-offs, by redistributing token balances atomically
- Hyperliquid has also opened its low-latency data nodes for under $1,000 a month, eliminating a previous 10,000-HYPE staking requirement to broaden access to its real-time trading data
🚚 Updates on NFTs
- NFT leaders remained stable; Punks held at 31.7 ETH, BAYC at 8.17 ETH, Pudgy at 3.92 ETH; Stonkbrokers dropped 20% to 10 ETH
- Good Vibes Club (+32%) and The Saudis (+650%) were among the top gainers
- NFT microcaps saw significant increases, including RH Machines (+400%), Robinhood Kitties (+400%), and fuwa (+240%)