The US Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has announced that it will allow digital token shares to be traded for the first time, under a securities law exemption known as the Innovation Exemption, with a five-year pilot period. This decision is seen as a major step for the digital capital market and the US stock market, as it opens the way for securities in token form on a blockchain to be traded legally under a clear regulatory framework. The trading of these token shares will rely on an AMM trading system, an automated liquidity provision mechanism. At the same time, there are issues to watch regarding shareholder rights for blockchain-based shares.
Senate Rejects Clarity Act as Crypto Industry Infighting Sinks Regulation Push
The U.S. Senate rejected the Clarity Act, ending the cryptocurrency industry's campaign for a comprehensive federal regulatory framework after the bill failed to secure the 60 votes needed to advance, The Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday. The measure, which had sought clearer rules for digital-asset businesses, capped months of negotiations among lawmakers, crypto companies and banks, and eventually expanded beyond 600 pages as negotiators fought over stablecoins, consumer protections and the treatment of public officials' crypto holdings. Coinbase Global Chief Executive Brian Armstrong became one of the most influential figures in the debate, pushing lawmakers to preserve rewards Coinbase offers on holdings of the USDC stablecoin, which banks opposed on the grounds that interest-like crypto rewards could pull deposits from traditional financial institutions. The disagreement came to a head in January when Armstrong withdrew support for an early version of the bill shortly before a Senate committee vote, and Republicans' final attempt to win Democratic support by placing President Trump's crypto assets in a blind trust failed to produce enough votes. Coinbase shares fell more than 10% after the Senate setback, then rebounded later in the week after the SEC opened a path for tokenized stocks to trade in the United States, and the bill's collapse prolongs regulatory uncertainty for Coinbase and other U.S. crypto companies.
Bitcoin Breaks Above $80,000, Aided by Falling Oil, Short Squeeze, and Resumption of ETF Inflows
Bitcoin rebounded 8% from a seven-day low of about $75,500 to reach $81,800. Falling crude oil prices eased inflation concerns and helped fuel a short squeeze above $80,000. U.S. Central Command commander Brad Cooper indicated an increase in crude oil, cargo, and liquefied natural gas shipments, and Brent crude fell from around $111 on September 11 to about $104, while WTI crude also dropped from $106 to below $100. The Fed raised its policy rate by 25 basis points to 3.75-4.00%, but the crypto market saw $201 million in forced liquidations over 24 hours, with shorts accounting for $112.9 million. A motion to begin deliberation on the CLARITY Act failed by a vote of 49 to 50, and its probability of passage fell from 31% to 7%, while the SEC introduced a five-year conditional exemption for TSV to handle tokenized NMS equities, and the CFTC also sent crypto trading and market regulation proposals to the White House. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw inflows of about $159 million on Thursday and $433 million on September 18, marking the first back-to-back net inflows since September 3.
Robinhood Chain fee revenue drops 97% as memecoin frenzy cools
Daily network fees paid by users on Robinhood Chain have fallen about 97% from their peak in early September. CoinDesk reported on September 19, based on on-chain data from growthepie, that the cooling of overheated memecoin trading is behind the decline. Fees dropped from about 8 million dollars to about 230,000 dollars by September 16, while transaction counts during the same period fell only about 32%, from 13.1 million to 8.9 million. The average fee per transaction plunged from about 64 cents to about 2.6 cents, meaning the drop in fee revenue was driven more by lower trading costs than by fewer users. At the center of the boom was Pons, a service that makes it easy to issue and trade memecoins; on August 30, 22,600 types of tokens were issued in a single day, but trading volume from September 10 to 16 fell 37% week over week to about 616 million dollars. Meanwhile, DEX trading volume across the entire chain rose about 5% week over week to about 12.8 billion dollars in the week through September 16, while Solana's DEX trading volume fell 8% over the same period, with no large-scale migration of users confirmed.
