Morning Minute: Washington Just Gave Crypto the Green Light

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack. GM! Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors slide as risk-off sentiment hits; BTC falls to 2026 low at $85,200
• Trump nominates Kevin Warsh as next Fed Chair to mixed reactions
• Senate Ag Committee advances market structure bill 12-11 despite Dem objections
• CFTC Chair Selig outlines plan to onshore perps and expand prediction markets
• Binance says it will convert $1B SAFU fund to Bitcoin

🏛️ Washington Just Gave Crypto the Green Light Despite some nasty price action—yesterday was a big day for crypto policy in the US. 📌 What Happened Two major developments hit Washington yesterday. First, the regulators. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Mike Selig held a joint “harmonization” event at CFTC headquarters, officially launching “Project Crypto” - the most ambitious inter-agency coordination effort on digital assets in a generation. Atkins said “the time is right” for retirement plans including 401(k)s to include crypto.

CFTC Chair Selig then laid out an aggressive agenda: rules for tokenized collateral, onshoring perpetuals, safe harbors for developers, a new registration category for retail leveraged crypto trading, and new prediction markets rulemaking. Then, Congress moved. Hours later, the Senate Agriculture Committee voted 12-11 to advance the crypto market structure bill, marking the furthest this legislation has ever progressed in the Senate. The bill would establish the first comprehensive federal framework defining regulatory jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC. It still needs to clear the Senate Banking Committee and gather Democratic support, but this is major progress after years of lobbying.  🗣️ What They’re Saying “For too long, market participants have been forced to navigate regulatory boundaries that are unclear in application and misaligned in design, based solely on legacy jurisdictional silos.” - Joint statement from SEC Chair Atkins and CFTC Chair Selig 🧠 Why It Matters Let’s zoom out.

In a single day:

• The SEC and CFTC publicly committed to stop fighting and start coordinating
• The SEC Chair endorsed crypto in 401(k) plans
• The CFTC Chair outlined plans to bring perps onshore
• The Senate advanced market structure legislation further than ever before

This is what a regulatory green light looks like. Now, let’s be clear about the implications.

• The 401(k) signal is massive. There’s roughly $10T sitting in 401(k) plans. If even 1-2% flows into crypto over the next few years, that’s $100-200 billion in new demand - dwarfing ETF inflows.
• The legislation still has hurdles. The 12-11 party-line vote shows this remains partisan. Democrats are demanding ethics provisions around Trump family crypto holdings. The White House is pushing back. Senator Booker called negotiations “infinitely harder” because of these conflicts.
• The perps piece is underrated. Selig’s comments about onshoring leveraged crypto products could bring billions in offshore trading volume back to U.S. venues. Right now, American traders use offshore perp DEXes. That could change.

The regulatory headwinds that defined the last four years are officially becoming tailwinds. The irony? All of this is happening while Bitcoin sits near its 2026 lows. The infrastructure is being built. The rails are being laid. The green light is on. Now we wait for the market to catch up…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are very red after one of the worst days in recent history; BTC -6% at $82,700; ETH -6% at $2,740; BNB -6% at $837; SOL -5% at $116
• CC (+3%) led top movers
• Gold and Silver fell 7% and 10% respectively, as the selloff hit metals as well
• **Trump **nominated Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as Fed Chair
• The SEC and CFTC’s “Project Crypto” initiative signaled incoming rules for tokenized collateral and onshore perpetuals
• The Senate Ag Committee advanced the crypto bill 12-11, but zero Democrats voted yes; Sen. Booker blamed the White House for tanking negotiations over ethics provisions
• CFTC Chair Selig withdrew the proposed ban on sports/politics prediction contracts and directed staff to draft new event contracts rulemaking - a major win for Kalshi and Polymarket
• Ethereum OGs launched a $220M security fund using 75,000 ETH left over from the 2016 DAO hack
• Vitalik announced he will invest $45M into Ethereum projects aimed at open-sourced security and privacy
• Senator Cory Booker criticized the White House, saying Trump family crypto conflicts have made negotiations “infinitely harder”
• Benchmark said Bitcoin’s quantum threat is “real but distant”, arguing the network has ample time to evolve

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw $818M in net outflows on Thursday with ETH seeing $155M
• Strategy and BitMine stocks both dove nearly 10% Thursday amid government shutdown fears; MSTR hit its lowest price since September 2024
• Coinbase stock fell for an 8th straight session to its weakest level since May
• Metaplanet closed a $137 million raise via shares and warrants to buy more Bitcoin; the Japanese firm now holds nearly $3B in BTC
• Securitize reported 841% revenue growth ahead of its SPAC merger

In Memes / Onchain Movers

• Memecoin leaders are red alongside majors; DOGE -5%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -7%, BONK -4%
• ELON coin led volume, jumping 110x to $5.5M ($15M at peak)
• OpenClaw jumped 60x to $2.8M, Buttcoin (+33%) and WAR (+32%) were other notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 daily volume hit a new ATH at $3.3B on Thursday amidst the selloff
• Binance announced it will gradually convert its $1B SAFU fund from stablecoins to Bitcoin across the next 30 days
• MegaETH shared its KPIs that will govern how the MEGA token supply is released
• Andre Cronje’s Flying Tulip raised $75M at a $1B valuation, marking crypto’s latest unicorn
• Infinex TGE is set to launch today at 2 pm ET

🚚 What is happening in NFTs? Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were red again on the day; Punks even at 28.4 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.05 ETH, BAYC -6% at 5.2 ETH; Hypurr’s -2% at 494 HYPE
• No notable movers