HUGE! SEC PROVIDES TOKENIZATION GUIDANCE! CLARITY ACT TO PASS IN 2027? S&P GLOBAL CRYPTO SECURITY!

Tony Edward (0:05)

Hey folks, welcome in to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. I'm your host Tony Edward. On your way in, please hit that subscribe button, as well as the thumbs up button, and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform, such as Spotify or Apple, please be sure to follow and leave a five star rating. All right, folks, let's talk about the SEC and CFTC, because today they both provided some huge rulemaking. Now, yesterday, I shared what the Chairs, Paul Adkins and Mike Selig, said about what their plan was, given that the Clarity Act did not pass in the Senate. And they said they were ready to ramp up and provide the rulemaking that's necessary for the crypto market. Well, they weren't kidding. Today, the SEC provided temporary relief for tokenized securities. So essentially, people looking to tokenize stocks and much more, they have guidance. This is huge. Now, it's still in the comment period, but it allows people to get started. And here's what Chair Atkins had to say regarding this news. He said, today, we are taking a significant step forward within our statutory authority to bring America's capital markets into the digital age by facilitating on-chain trading of certain tokenized stocks through the innovation exemption. Some additional context to this, it is formally granting these so-called tokenized securities venues, the ability to provide automated market makers and liquidity pools that in turn can be used to trade tokenized securities. These companies will have a five-year conditional exemption from having to meet the definition of an exchange in the US securities laws according to the SEC.

So again, the SEC is providing the guidance and rulemaking that's needed to boost adoption. And a lot of this language is in the Clarity Act.

However, the agencies would have to provide the details and all the moving parts and components. And as we talked about, the Clarity Act would essentially lock all of this in and make it law.

Now, we still have time to get that done, but the agencies are not waiting. And as we've talked about ad nauseam, the institutions and the different companies that are looking to build, they want to hear from the agencies because the agencies are the ones who provide all the details and of course they do the enforcement. Remember, it's not Congress sending you a Wells Notice or a lawsuit. It's the SEC or the CFTC, right? So this is really great. And the SEC also cleared og.com to offer single stock features, says crypto.com CEO. So crypto.com CEO said its sister exchange has been cleared to offer US access to single stock perpetual features as the latest platform to bridge TradFi and digital assets. So again, SEC not slowing down. And on the CFTC front, they also provided a big update here for developers. So the staff issued a no action position to providers of passive software. So essentially it protects developers in the crypto space. So we are seeing some incredible rulemaking here from the agencies. And this is very bullish. It will unlock a lot of innovation, a lot of adoption, a lot more capital to come into the market.

Now, as it relates to the Clarity Act, Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, of course, I had him on the podcast just a few months back. He says Congress will revisit the Clarity Act next year as the crypto tax bill advances.

So he's pretty plugged into DC, and he's hearing that this may take place next year. Now, I'm still hoping, based on what we saw, some Democrats say yesterday that they are looking to come back to the table and to work this out. Now, will they actually do that? We don't know. Because they seem to be acting in good faith leading up to the vote, and then all of a sudden all of them voted no. So it's really hard to tell, and politics is really taking over here, especially as the midterm elections are coming up. So maybe after the midterm elections are out of the way, and the dust settles there, they can focus in on just getting the bill done, and it won't be any politics in the sense of, we don't want to give Trump a win before the midterm elections type thing. We'll have to wait and see. I don't know what's going to happen, but obviously very disappointing what happened this week, and Kevin O'Leary here is saying, look, it looks like this is going to happen in 2027 Now something that's very funny.

So you got the regulatory agencies providing the crypto guidance and rulemaking because the Clarity Act didn't pass. And then Coinbase, literally like the day after the Clarity Act didn't pass, they upped their percentage of payouts for USDC stablecoin rewards. So this is a big F you to the banks, right? And look, I'm a user. I have money in USD earning rewards because, I mean, you get 3.7% APY. So that's great passive income. And I'm going to put more money in because I'm getting more now. And I'm sure some of you are also users. I know I also have some on uphold and different platforms. Some of you use different platforms. It's just so fascinating and so funny at the same time. But as I said, guys, you know, the Democrats and the banks want to play games, then the status quo remains. Stablecoin yield will continue to be paid out. And there's no ethics in place. Look, Donald Trump could go launch another coin. And because they didn't get the ethics deal done, the status quo remains. So that's on them.