Senate Banking Committee Reviews CLARITY Act Today

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In Today's Note

• BTC remained under pressure, briefly falling to $78.8K as spot Bitcoin ETFs saw their largest single-day outflow since late January and options markets continued to price low volatility with downside hedging demand.
• US equities pushed to new highs despite sticky inflation, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 closing at records even as PPI surprised to the upside and Treasury yields moved higher across the curve.
• Today’s crypto section focuses on regulation, event markets, Solana treasury strategies, Bitcoin treasury companies and tokenised cash management, including the CLARITY Act markup, CFTC no-action relief for event contracts, DeFi Development’s SOL-per-share update, Nakamoto’s Bitcoin-focused results and Fidelity’s tokenised money market fund.‍
  

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

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Macro & Markets

• BTC briefly fell to $78,800 yesterday evening, a level it last traded at in early May before quickly rebounding back above $79K. 
• Yesterday Spot Bitcoin ETFs withdrew $630.4M, the largest single-day outflow since Jan 29, 2026. 
• In options markets, short-dated contracts are trading close to their year-to-date lows (with implied volatility at a historical low of 30%). That’s largely in line with BTC moving with a far lower level of volatility, which around 25% is equally near its year-to-date lows.
• Volatility smiles for both majors, BTC and ETH, are also still tilted towards put contracts, a sign that traders remain hedged against a downside in spot price. 

• As Bitcoin continues to linger in the $80K vicinity and still trades 37% below its October 2025 all-time high, US equities once more closed at record highs on Wednesday — looking past another higher-than-expected inflation report. 
• The S&P 500 Index gained 0.58%, while the Nasdaq 100 Index jumped 1.04%. 
• That rally was led by chipmakers and megacap technology stocks, such as Nvidia Corp. which rallied 2.29%.

• Wholesale inflation in the US accelerated in April on a yearly-basis to the fastest pace since December 2022, driven by the increase in energy prices from the US-Iran war. 
• The producer price index rose 6% year-over-year, exceeding all estimates in Bloomberg’s survey of economists. On a monthly basis, the index rose 1.4%, against expectations of 0.5% and the largest increase since March 2022. 
• According to the BLS, “More than three-quarters” of the gain in goods prices came from a “7.8- percent jump in prices for final demand energy”.

• US treasuries across the curve rose following the PPI report. The 10-year treasury yield and 30-year yield jumped to 4.49% and 5.04% respectively, both at their highest since July 2025.

• President Trump arrived in Beijing for his summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 
• Before leaving the White House for China, Trump said he’s going to have a great meeting as his “relationship with President Xi is a fantastic one. We’ve always gotten along and we’re doing very well with China, and working with China has been very good, so we look forward to it”. 
• Earlier in the week, the US president said that the focus of his discussions with President Xi would be around securing stronger trade deals and agreements between the two sides, and less about the war against Iran.

DeFi & TradFi

• The Senate Banking Committee’s CLARITY Act markup is set for today, May 14, 2026, at 10:30 AM ET, with lawmakers due to consider H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025.
• More than 100 amendments have reportedly been filed ahead of the vote, covering stablecoin reward language, sanctions powers, DeFi rules, a CBDC ban, and crypto-related banking access, as senators seek changes to the latest committee text.
• For example, Sen. Jack Reed (Democrat), reportedly proposed changing the stablecoin rewards wording from “economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit” to “substantially similar to the manner in which banking organizations pay interest or yield,”.

• U.S. derivatives regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a no-action letter covering data reporting and recordkeeping rules for certain fully collateralised event contracts.
• The agency said it will not recommend enforcement action against designated contract markets, derivatives clearing organisations, or their participants for failing to meet certain swap data reporting requirements linked to fully collateralised event contract transactions.
• The move could positively affect prediction and event-contract markets with crypto-sector participants, including Crypto.com Derivatives North America, Polymarket US, Bitnomial, and Gemini entities listed in the letter’s appendix.

• DeFi Development Corp. (NASDAQ: DFDV), a publicly traded company focused on accumulating and compounding Solana as a treasury asset, reported a SOL-per-share (SPS) of 0.0670 as of May 13, up 108% year-on-year, while reaffirming a June 2026 target of 0.075 SPS and a long-term goal of 1.0 SPS by the end of 2028.
• The company disclosed holdings of 2.29M SOL and SOL equivalents, up 3% since March, while continuing to expand validator operations, staking infrastructure, treasury deployment strategies, and Solana ecosystem partnerships as part of its broader on-chain yield and treasury model.
• DeFi Development also repurchased approximately $4.4M of its July 2030 convertible debt for just $2.6M in cash, allowing the company to retire liabilities at a roughly 41% discount to their original face value, as it continues using balance sheet optimization strategies alongside its SOL accumulation approach.

• Bitcoin treasury and former healthcare company Nakamoto (NASDAQ: NAKA) has announced that its Q1 2026 results reflect its shift into a Bitcoin-focused operating business after acquiring BTC Inc. and UTXO Management in February.
• The company published that revenue reached $2.7M, including $1.1M from its Bitcoin treasury and derivatives strategy, while its BTC holdings exceeded 5,000 coins with a quarter-end value of about $345M.
• Nakamoto has said that its $238.8M net loss was mainly tied to non-cash Bitcoin valuation losses, acquisition-related accounting impacts, and integration costs, as it winds down legacy healthcare operations and expands across Bitcoin media, asset management, advisory, and treasury activities.

• Fidelity International, a global asset manager with more than $1T in assets under management, has launched its first tokenized money market fund, FILQ, with Moody’s assigning the Ethereum-based vehicle a top-tier AAA-mf rating similar to traditional institutional liquidity funds.
• FILQ is structured as an on-chain version of Fidelity’s existing $7B Irish-domiciled LVNAV fund and uses Sygnum’s tokenization infrastructure and Chainlink oracle feeds sourcing NAV data from JPMorgan to support 24/7 subscriptions and redemptions via stablecoins.
• The ERC-20 fund invests in highly rated government securities and is designed to provide institutional investors with blockchain-native cash management and settlement infrastructure, while Sygnum manages KYC, AML, token issuance, and smart contract-enabled settlement flows.

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