Morning Minute: Democrats Want A Seat at the Crypto Table

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 chop, SOL leads at $220; BTC at $112,300
• Several crypto mining stocks soar on back of Oracle report of AI demand
• Senate Democrats give list of conditions to work together on crypto market structure bill
• Hyperliquid’s USDH proposal bids now heavily favor Native Markets
• SBET buys 0 ETH last week, spends $15M on share buybacks

🏛️ Democrats Want A Seat at the Crypto Table

One of the biggest outstanding risks to crypto in America is its politicization and the potential for reversals and clawbacks if power changes.

Well, that risk can be alleviated right now if Senate Democrats get their way.

📌 What Happened

An important crypto market structure bill is currently being debated in Congress, and it looks like a group of pro-crypto Democrats are ready to work across the aisle –

As long as certain conditions are met.

Yesterday, a group of 12 Senate Democrats released a policy framework spelling out what they want in any digital-asset market-structure bill.

First and foremost, they want seats at the SEC and CFTC. Both of which have 5 commissioner seats, capped at 3 per party.

In addition to those seats, other conditions span:

• consumer protection
• jurisdictional clarity between the SEC and CFTC
• rules for issuers and trading platforms
• guardrails on illicit finance, and
• ethics provisions to curb political self-dealing.

The move is positioned as a response to the GOP’s expanding draft and an invitation to negotiate a bipartisan deal that can clear the Senate.

The Democratic cohort includes Sens. Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock and others, several of whom voted for the bipartisan GENIUS stablecoin law, suggesting they’re viable swing votes.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“For digital assets regulation to succeed, it is essential that regulators have the funding and staff that they need. These agencies also require Democratic voices, as Congress intended: only a bipartisan regulatory process will produce durable, balanced rules that provide long-term stability and legitimacy for digital asset markets.” – Letter published by Sen. Ruben Gallego

“Democrats want to rightfully feel like their voice and concerns have a proxy in the room during any rulemaking at these agencies, and they want to know that, if confirmed, those commissioners won’t be summarily fired.” – A D.C. insider, speaking to Decrypt

🧠 Why It Matters

This is the path to a real, durable crypto framework that can survive a change in power.

A Republican-only bill can pass the House, but it cannot clear the Senate without Democratic votes—and even if it did, it would be vulnerable to reversal in the next political cycle.

Bringing Democrats into the conversation now raises the odds of a stable, bipartisan regulatory framework that survives changes in power.

And overall their conditions are very reasonable: they want seats at the SEC & CFTC to have a say, assurances that new rules won’t weaken existing tradfi ones, prevention of using crypto to evade regulations, preserving consumer protection and creation an “appropriate and effective” DeFi framework.

On paper, all of those things make sense.

Working across the aisle now and reaching bipartisan agreement means less regulatory whiplash for exchanges, issuers, and investors, and a more predictable future.

And most importantly of all for 2028: if power flips again, a bipartisan law on the books is much harder to unwind than agency guidance or a narrow, partisan statute.

Cooperation today is the cheapest insurance policy against policy U-turns tomorrow.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are mostly flat with SOL leading; BTC -0.3% at $112,300, ETH -0.5% at $4,330, XRP -1% at $2.97, SOL +1% at $220
• STORY (+17%), MNT (+13%) and PUMP (+13%) led top movers
• Several crypto stocks saw significant breakouts yesterday, including CIFR (+19%), IREN (+15%), RIOT (+13%), ABTC (+11%) and GLXY (+10%)
• Senate Democrats outlined a set of conditions and a push for seats on the SEC and CFTC to influence crypto market-structure legislation, showing openness to passing crypto legislation along as it’s bipartisan
• Eric Trump was removed from ALT5 Sigma, World LibertyFi’s treasury company, to meet Nasdaq compliance rules
• Trump’s Truth Social and Truth+ will allow users to convert “gems” to CRO tokens, alleviating concerns of another net new Trump token coming
• The CBOE said it plans to launch long-dated “Continuous” Bitcoin and Ethereum futures for U.S. customers in November, pending regulatory approval
• A Doge ETF ‘DOJE’ is slated to launch tomorrow as first ever major meme ETF
• Kraken rolled out its tokenized equities ‘xStocks’ to the EU

In Corporate Treasuries

• SharpLink had no ETH buys last week, but began executing its previously authorized $1.5B stock buyback with an initial $15M repurchase
• Metaplanet raised another $1.45B via share sale to buy more BTC
• QMMM stock jumped 17x on Tuesday after they announced a $100M treasury for BTC, ETH and SOL

In Memes

• Meme coin leaders are slightly red on the day; DOGE even, Shiba -1%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -3%, BONK -3%, TRUMP even, SPX even, and FARTCOIN -1%
• PUMP rallied another 13% to $5.4B FDV and a new local high
• IRYNA soared 660% to $24M leading onchain SOL runners; STREAMER (+240%), 67 (+40%) and XVM (+80%) all had notable moves

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

• Overall market cap down 3% at $13.5B, leaders were red
• FARTCOIN (-1%), VIRTUAL (-3%), TIBBIR (-2%), aixbt (-8%) & ai16z (-7%)
• LEA (+15%) and CGPT (+5%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH NFT leaders were mostly even; Punks even at 48.3 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 10.4, BAYC -2% at 9.05 ETH
• Creepz +17% were a notable mover
• Abstract NFTs were mixed, led by Bearish (+12%)
• Art Blocks introduced its 2nd to last Art Blocks Curated project, ‘Gas Wars’ by Jack Butcher coming September 17