Important Information
【Trump's Digital Asset Advisor Calls for Prompt Passage of the Crypto 'Market Structure' Bill (CLARITY/Clarity Act)】
Overview: Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the White House Presidential Digital Asset Advisory Committee, posted on X that he refuted the position of 'better to have none than to have some', stating that 'the bill will eventually pass' and urged for swift progress in the current pro-crypto administration and congressional environment, aiming to secure 60 votes in the Senate through compromise. The background is that last week Coinbase withdrew its support for the draft, resulting in the Senate Banking Committee postponing the markup meeting.
Impact/Insight: This sends a strong signal from the executive branch of 'legislate first, fine-tune later', which is expected to boost short-term expectations for regulatory clarity, but compromises on terms (such as DeFi, stablecoin yields, tokenized securities) may weaken some 'decentralized/yield' business spaces. The legislative progress and direction of terms will directly affect the valuation anchors of U.S. exchanges and compliant public blockchain ecosystems.
[Competition in stablecoin payments intensifies: Rain's financing valuation approaches $2 billion, igniting the battle for 'crypto card payment stack']
Overview: Stablecoin card and payment infrastructure company Rain announced the completion of a $250 million Series C financing, with an estimated valuation of approximately $1.95 billion, and the number of active cards and annual payment volume have increased by 30 times and 38 times year-on-year, respectively; its platform has served over 200 enterprises with an annual processing volume exceeding $3 billion.
Impact/Insight: Rain's amplification of the integration capability of 'compliance cards + stablecoin settlement + rewards/redemption' will create competition with giants like @Visa and @PayPal in stablecoin settlement/acceptance networks, promoting the B2B and merchant side of 'stablecoins as payment media'. This will create incremental demand for the USDC ecosystem and issuers (like Circle), and will also amplify effects on upstream public chains and compliant custody.
[U.S. stocks/crypto ETFs under pressure, net outflow of BTC/ETH ETFs totaled approximately $713 million in a single day]
Overview: Against the backdrop of weakening macro risk appetite, net outflow from the U.S. spot BTC ETF was approximately $483 million, and net outflow from the ETH ETF was approximately $230 million.
Impact/Insight: This reinforces the signal of 'short-term risk reduction in the funding space', and the U.S.-Europe tariff issues have amplified fluctuations in the spot market; if legislation and macro expectations improve and funds flow back, ETFs will still be a key observation window for marginal increments.
Industry Dynamics
[Chainlink launches 24/5 U.S. stock data streams, bringing approximately $80 trillion U.S. stock and ETF data on-chain]
Content Summary: Technological Innovation. Chainlink launched '24/5 U.S. Equities Streams', providing continuous pre-market/post-market/overnight high-frequency data for U.S. stocks and ETFs (including buy/sell orders, transactions, status indicators, and freshness metrics) to DeFi for the first time, and announced it has been implemented on over 40 chains, adopted by BitMEX, ApeX, Orderly, etc., aimed at supporting U.S. stock perpetuals, synthetic assets, structured products, and other RWA scenarios.
Related Assets: Chainlink$LINK
This product directly strengthens its oracle and data stream business margins, potentially increasing the demand for LINK in DeFi/RWA and capturing settlement value.
[Chen Maobo: Stablecoin licenses expected to be issued later this year, adopting a 'proactive and prudent' attitude towards the development of digital assets]
Content Summary: Policy Regulation. Hong Kong Financial Secretary Chen Maobo stated at Davos that Hong Kong has issued 11 virtual asset platform licenses since 2023, and expects to begin issuing stablecoin licenses 'later this year', following the principle of 'same activity, same risk, same regulation', promoting tokenization and other applications.
Related Assets: Stablecoins USDC/USDT (as direct regulatory objects); OSL Group (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 0863, holding SFC licensed trading platform), expected to benefit from institutional participation and product expansion due to the improvement of the stablecoin compliance ecosystem.
Price Dynamics
[Bitcoin]$BTC
As of January 21 at 21:50, BTC was approximately $88,608, with a daily change of about +0.26%.
Driving Analysis: Mainly influenced by the drop in macro risk appetite and the net outflow of approximately $713 million from U.S. spot BTC/ETH ETFs, the short-term funding space is tending towards risk reduction; legislative expectations (market structure bill) provide medium-term imagination but are still insufficient to offset the day's capital outflow and risk aversion.
[Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN)]
As of January 21 at 21:50, COIN's pre-market price was $227, down 5.57% for the day.
Driving Analysis: After the company withdrew its support for the 'market structure' draft last week, the Senate postponed the marking session, increasing legislative uncertainty, while the weakening funding in Bitcoin and crypto ETFs brought Beta retraction, putting pressure on exchange Beta stock prices. Since that week, the market and crypto retraction has resonated, showing volatility during after-hours/intraday trading.
