Morning Minute: Democrat Sweep Pumps Crypto as Clarity Act Resurfaces

By Tyler Warner

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. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors pump out of Midterms then retrace; BTC at $79.6k
• House Democrats talk about Clarity Act amendments
• BTC and ETH ETFs flip to inflows, breaking outflow streak
• STRC hits $100 par for the first time since May
• Coinbase says 99% of customer assets are held in cold storage

🗳️ Democrat Sweep Pumps Crypto as Market Structure Bill Resurfaces

Bitcoin spent Tuesday night under $76,000, a seven-week low, with traders bracing for whatever a Democratic Congress meant for crypto. By Wednesday afternoon it was back above $80,800, up 4% on the day.

The easy story is that uncertainty lifted and crypto exhaled. And that could be part of it. But oil helped. WTI fell 9% to $88 a barrel, down almost 17% on the week, as Iran’s parliament speaker said voters had “said NO TO WAR.” The DOW jumped 3% on the day and Nasdaq +1.6% in what was a huge green day across markets.

James Butterfill of CoinShares put it plainly: “For Bitcoin, real yields, dollar liquidity and ETP flows still carry more weight than the elections.”

But the policy news that landed Wednesday afternoon matters more than the candles.

Eleanor Terrett reported that House Democrats are discussing expanding Maxine Waters’ Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights, originally an amendment to the CLARITY Act in 2025, into a full market structure bill next Congress. The draft would fold in Democratic CLARITY provisions that the House rejected last year, plus provisions Senate Democrats and Republicans had already agreed on before the September cloture vote that killed the bill. Three industry sources described the talks to her.

That’s a genuine surprise. Twenty-four hours ago the consensus was that market structure legislation was dead for two years. Waters is the likely incoming chair of House Financial Services, and she is apparently planning to write a bill rather than hold hearings. But the bill will have some changes.

The new proposals under discussion would give the SEC a larger role supervising crypto markets and leave the CFTC with a smaller one. The draft is expected to carry ethics provisions restricting the crypto activities of Trump and other federal officials. Those provisions are what Democrats wanted all along, and what many thought would kill any chances the bill has of getting signed.

So one of the first courses of action from this Democrat-led Congress is to enact some reasonable changes to the Clarity Act to try to get it passed in 2027. That feels like a very bullish first step.

Let the post-Trump crypto era begin…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green after a post-midterms rally; BTC +2% at $79.9k; ETH +3% at $2,390; SOL +2% at $95; HYPE -5% at $81.80; ZEC even at $1,298
• INJ (+8%), ATOM (+7%), and RAY (+6%) led top alt movers
• Oil -8% at $88; Gold +1.5% at $4,135
• Stock futures are mixed after yesterday’s rally; DOW +0.5%, Nasdaq -0.7%
• Coinbase said it holds more than 99% of customer assets in cold storage in a blog post responding to the Binance hack, detailing split cold-wallet keys that are never fully reassembled, rate limits on cold-to-hot transfers, and kill switches that take signing keys offline entirely
• ZachXBT named French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the alleged victim of a crypto theft now exceeding $133 million, up from the $106 million he flagged Monday
• Morgan Stanley converted U.S. equities and Treasuries into tokenized form through the DTCC Tokenization Service, which launched October 28 on the Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu chain
• Binance and Deribit revoked all API keys linked to third-party trading platform SignalPlus after SignalPlus flagged a potential security issue

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $74M in net inflows on Wednesday; the ETH ETFs saw $53M in inflows
• Saylor’s STRC hit its $100 par value yesterday for the first time since May, enabling Strategy to buy 191 BTC

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE -2%, PENGU -2%, TRUMP -15%, SPX -2%, BONK -2%
• Robinhood chain leaders were mostly red; Pons -1% to $145M; Cashcat -3% at $102M; AI -12% at $52M; Standard +12% and Ubik +40% led top movers
• Solana top movers included HIGH +12x, GTA +76x, and Rambo +600%; Cards +20% on Upbit listing

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in revenue on the day with $3.67M, followed by Pump.fun at $1.71M and Uniswap at $364k
• Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued Kalshi over its sports event contracts, alleging the exchange operates an unlicensed gambling platform and sidestepped state licensing and taxes
• A Polygon Labs validator support team member proposed a hard fork of Polygon PoS to move roughly 70.49 million POL stolen in the Polymarket and Binance hacks, worth about $6.5 million, from the attackers’ addresses to recovery addresses designated by both companies;

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mixed; Punks even at 30.4 ETH, BAYC +1% at 5.64 ETH, Pudgy -4% at 2.25 ETH
• Wired (+30%) and Milady (+5%) led top movers

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