Clarity Act Rejected, Market Relieved

In the early hours of last Wednesday, the Clarity Act vote took place. Park Sang-hyun, Digital Asset Editor-in-Chief, said that although it was rejected, follow-up news that the worst-case scenario had been avoided created a slight sense of relief in the market.

This sense of relief is interpreted as stemming from reduced uncertainty in the digital asset market that had been expected if the bill had passed.

The market found relief in the fact that this decision was already within expectations.

A rally appeared across risk assets, showing a tendency for market uncertainty to ease.

On top of this, news that Saudi Arabia's oil pipeline was destroyed by a drone attack caused oil prices to surge.

This led to a situation where geopolitical risks in the Middle East directly affected the energy market.

Saudi Arabia introduced a new method for supplying crude oil to the Asian region. It announced it would use a method of directly transferring oil by connecting pipes between vessels at sea.

This report eased concerns that crude oil supply would be completely blocked, and acted as a factor causing oil prices to temporarily fall.

Park Sang-hyun, Editor-in-Chief, pointed out that as a result, the gap between spot and futures prices is widening considerably.

It is expected that futures prices will normalize once geopolitical risks are resolved.

After the rate hike announcement, market uncertainty eased, which had a positive effect on the bond market.

As a second factor, falling oil prices lowered inflationary pressure and slowed the rise in government bond yields. Since oil price fluctuations directly affect inflation rates, falling oil prices were taken by bond investors as a signal that eased inflation concerns.

Third, as government bond yields continued to rise, more investors sought to buy them. High yields increased the investment appeal of bonds and attracted buying, which contributed to easing upward pressure on yields.

These complex factors combined to show U.S. Treasury yields calming down.

The first is a method in which issuers such as Securitize directly tokenize their own stocks.

The second is a method of issuing tokenized stocks through intermediaries such as DTCC, and the third is tokenized stocks that track prices but have no voting or dividend rights, such as those from Coinbase or Robinhood. Finally, there are tokenized stocks in the form of derivatives such as perpetual futures.

If a third party wishes to issue tokenized stocks, it must request written permission from the company within 30 days.

The company may exercise its right of refusal within 30 days from the date of written submission, and if the company refuses, the tokenized stock cannot be issued.

The SEC divided the number of listed stocks into Tier 1 and Tier 2, limiting them to 75 and 150 respectively.

It also announced a plan to regulate trading volume by setting upper limits such as 0.25% and 2.5% of the previous day's trading volume.

In the new regulatory environment, there may be significant restrictions on tokenized stock trading. In particular, the Type A market is currently small, and most trading takes place in Types B, C, and D.

Type B proceeds through intermediaries such as DTCC, and with the option for companies to exercise a right of refusal, it shows a different pattern from before. In the past, exchanges could push ahead if they had the will, but now corporate consent has become an essential factor.

The main reason companies oppose tokenized stock issuance is the precedent from when Robinhood issued tokenized stocks offshore and major companies opposed issuance without permission. When going public (IPO), the listing price and level are determined through consultation with underwriters, and if tokenized stocks are issued externally first, variables can arise in this strategy.

It is analyzed that companies are likely to exercise their right of refusal because they do not want to create unpredictable variables in their listing plans.

Recently, as the amount of RWA (real-world assets) on the Avalanche blockchain surged, Securitize's revenue increased significantly. Securitize oversaw this large-scale RWA project conducted on Avalanche.

This increase in performance led to a rise in Securitize's stock price, and this movement appears likely to continue for the time being.

It pointed out that there are more short positions on Bitcoin than on gold in the derivatives market.

It interpreted the recent underperformance of Bitcoin compared to gold as due to these short positions, and mentioned that if institutional short positions for hedging purposes decrease, Bitcoin's additional upside potential is high.

This appears to express concerns about the lack of legal stability in digital asset regulatory policy.

However, there is also a counterargument that guidelines implemented within two years of Trump's term would be difficult to reverse easily. It was also emphasized that midterm election results could significantly affect policy continuity.

Thus, a change in administration could act as an important variable adding uncertainty to the regulatory environment of the digital asset market.

This is the only case among the top 10 digital assets to show a surge.

This phenomenon is analyzed as likely due to a specific cause concentrating market supply and demand into Zcash.

The surface-level reason for the Zcash (ZEC) price surge is cited as the recent continued strengthening of inflows into Zcash spot ETFs. In addition, major Zcash stakeholders such as DCG are participating.

Also, as a vote to establish a halving system is underway, growing expectations for supply scarcity have influenced the price rise.

DCG is an early investor in Zcash (ZEC) and is known to hold about 500,000 coins. According to public data, ETF contributions account for only 0.51% of circulating supply, but actual estimates reach 3.5% to 4%.

Due to the influence of Barry Silbert, founder of DCG, Zcash tends to lead the privacy coin theme.

Police defined prediction markets as gambling and conducted an investigation, but among investors criticism is raised that this is excessive given the lack of a clear definition of prediction markets.

This suggests that there is controversy over legal interpretation and regulatory application for new types of digital platforms.