Morning Minute: Trump’s Crypto Entanglements Threaten CLARITY Act Timeline

Morning Minute is a every day e-newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The evaluation and opinions expressed are his personal and don’t essentially replicate these of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Right now’s prime information:

Crypto majors fall to new native lows, then rebound; BTC -3% at $76k
Vitalik says the unique L2 imaginative and prescient not is smart in prolonged X publish
Y Combinator pronounces groups can obtain $500k funding in USDC this spring
Circle pronounces a $30,000 hackathon solely for AI brokers
Commonplace Chartered releases $2,000 SOL value goal for 2030 primarily based on micropayments domination

🏛️ Senator Murphy Accuses Trump of “Legal Conduct” Over UAE Crypto Deal

The President’s crypto ties as soon as once more have the broader trade’s legislative push in scorching water.

📌 What Occurred

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) accused President Trump of “brazen, open corruption,” alleging the UAE secretly funneled $187M to Trump household entities by way of World Liberty Monetary simply days earlier than his inauguration, then acquired restricted AI chip entry in return.

Senator Murphy alleged “doubtlessly legal conduct” tied to a $500M deal the place UAE-backed Aryam Funding bought 49% of World Liberty Monetary 4 days earlier than Trump took workplace.

Per WSJ reporting, roughly $187M flowed to Trump household entities and $31M to particular envoy Steve Witkoff’s household, shortly earlier than the administration greenlit expanded UAE entry to superior AI chips that Biden had restricted.

This all occurred whereas the White Home hosted a two-hour crypto summit Monday with Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, Tether, Circle, and main banks to barter stablecoin yield provisions within the CLARITY Act.

No deal was reached, however the administration set a February deadline for compromise.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“That’s corruption. These are the weather of a bribe. That is doubtlessly legal conduct,” Murphy stated on the Senate ground. He warned that “the rule of regulation is coming again” and that these concerned “are going to jail.”

Trump instructed reporters Monday he was unaware of the funding: “I don’t learn about it. My sons are dealing with that. My household is dealing with it, and I assume they get investments from totally different folks.”

A World Liberty Monetary spokesperson flatly denied any connection: “Any declare that this deal had something to do with the Administration’s actions on chips is 100% false. The leftwing media is dishonestly pushing baseless innuendo.”

🧠 Why It Issues

So the place does this go away us?

The crypto market construction invoice that’s purported to carry regulatory readability is now caught in the course of a brand new partisan battle.

Democrats are tying passage to anti-corruption provisions concentrating on Trump’s crypto companies.

Banks are nonetheless clinging to the stablecoin provisions as a deal breaker.

And the UAE scandal is offering ammunition to anybody who desires to gradual issues down.

For markets: Regulatory uncertainty isn’t going away.

The invoice that was supposed to supply a “foundational framework” by Q1 is now hostage to partisan warfare.

Now we wait to see if the administration can separate Trump’s private crypto ventures from the trade’s legislative priorities…



🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors are crimson however rebounding after a serious selloff; BTC -3% at $76K; ETH -1% at $2,250; SOL -6% at $96.4; XRP -1% at ~$1.59
WLFI (+5%) led prime movers
Vitalik Buterin ripped up Ethereum’s L2-focused roadmap, warning some layer-2s have compromised on decentralization and shouldn’t be “branded” as Ethereum extensions
The Epstein information revealed Jeffrey Epstein invested $500K in Blockstream’s 2014 seed spherical by Joi Ito’s fund and invited Adam Again to his island
Y Combinator introduced startups can obtain $500K seed checks in USDC on Base, Solana, or Ethereum beginning this spring
Justin Solar’s alleged ex-girlfriend accused him of utilizing worker identities to run coordinated Binance accounts that pumped TRX earlier than dumping on retail
Commonplace Chartered minimize its 2026 SOL goal to $250 (from $310) however raised long-term forecast to $2,000 by 2030; says Solana will dominate stablecoin micropayments because it strikes past memecoin
Cathie Wooden’s Ark Make investments purchased $72M in crypto shares Monday: $32.7M Robinhood, $14.6M CoreWeave, $9.4M Circle, $6.3M BitMine, $6M Bullish, $1.3M Coinbase

Company Treasuries & ETFs

The BTC ETFs noticed $272M in internet inflows on Tuesday, although ETH squeaked by with $14M in inflows
Galaxy Digital plunged ~16% after reporting a $482M This autumn internet loss
Kraken mother or father Payward posted $2.2B in 2025 adjusted income (+33% YoY)

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme majors had been principally flat; DOGE +1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP -1%, FARTCOIN -2%
Notable Solana movers: arc (+40%), Buttcoin (+14%), WhiteWhale (+26%)
CLAWSTR run 17x on Base to $12M; RENT +10x to $2M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Circle introduced a $30,000 hackathon solely for AI brokers, spanning agentic commerce, OpenClaw expertise and sensible contracts
Ondo acquired EU regulatory approval to checklist tokenized shares and eTFs
Ethena introduced Trade Factors as its new rewards program for buying and selling exercise on Ethena
Euphoria introduced a 2-week faucet buying and selling competitors beginning Feb 16 on MegaETH
RentAHuman.ai launched a service letting AI brokers rent people for IRL duties paid in stablecoins (RENT

🚚 What is occurring in NFTs?

NFT leaders had been principally crimson; Punks -2% at 27 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.2 ETH, BAYC even at 5.36 ETH; Hypurr’s -4% at 520 HYPE
Cyberkongz (+60%) led notable movers