tl;dr
The CLARITY Act is officially delayed to September. Coinbase continues its march forward.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
The will-they, won’t-they Strait of Hormuz saga continues to be a drag on crypto appetite. The latest wheeze is a draft bill in Tehran's parliament that would ban US, Israeli and other 'hostile' ships. That seems an unlikely solution to me.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The CLARITY Act
The CCC has been telling y’all for a long time now that the CLARITY Act will not pass this year and is unlikely to get a hearing in the Senate after the midterms.
In its stead, the SEC and the CFTC will make up the lost ground. That isn’t as durable as actual legislation, but it will do for now. Needs be, needs be, as Anne told us.
The popular crypto press is very focused on CLARITY, with many commentators forecasting doom and despair if it fails to pass. The contrarian in me spies an opportunity. I think this is probably a buy-the-rumour (with spare ammo to double up with some ridiculously low-ball bids) and-sell the-news event. Note this is not investment advice, merely an expression of what I might be doing.
Meanwhile, to the surprise of no one at all, the Wall Street Journal has come out against CLARITY in an editorial titled “Clarity for Crypto, Sort of”. It opens:
“Congress often passes legislation riddled with policy land mines because the Members don’t want to do the hard work of defusing them. A case in point is the crypto regulation bill now in the Senate that Republicans are rushing to pass before they leave town this week.”
Nate Geraci made this very reasonable and accurate riposte defenders of ingrained bank hegemony such as the WSJ:
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STOP PRESS
Early this morning, Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed that voting for the CLARITY Act has now been pushed back to September at the earliest. Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone remains rather more upbeat than I:
“While this isn't the result any of us hoped for when we began the week, the fight is far from over. The next few weeks, we will continue to work to find the last pieces of common ground needed to set up a successful vote when Congress returns in September.”
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Coinbase
Coinbase is a long-term core holding for the CC Treasury. Its ambition is to become an “Everything Exchange”.
The next step on that road is the launch of 24/5 trading in the UK for nearly 4,000 US stocks with zero commission and fractional share ownership down to just one pound. Keith Grose, Regional Managing Director UK and Europe at Coinbase, explains:
“We've made great progress in recent months in building Coinbase into a one-stop shop where users can seamlessly access stocks, stablecoins, savings, and more from a single platform.”
This launch comes on the back of Coinbase’s recently secured UK MiFID licence, one of several developments in the UK which suggest that newly installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s claim to be a crypto supporter might be true. Forgive my early scepticism, but the speed with which ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak let down the crypto industry whilst simultaneously claiming the opposite is too recent a memory to erase.
Note that Coinbase is providing access to real shares, not tokenised securities, though we should expect that to change in the future. I assume that the ability to buy fractions of a share is therefore serviced by a derivative product, but when I contacted them for clarification, none was forthcoming.