Outlook for the Week: Crypto under Trump

Thanks to the pre-bull rise in crypto after Trump, I think everyone is very happy to see the long-awaited rise. I think that if Trump fulfills even 1/10 of his promises, it will be enough for cryptocurrencies to enter an aggressive upward trend that we have perhaps never seen before. However, apart from the price, we should not neglect the developments in the market.

Now, with Trump coming to power, it is expected that regulators will give up their insistence on not regulating cryptocurrencies and turn to more constructive and practical policies. Stable currencies are at the forefront of this regulation need.

Almost every week for the past few months, at least one Wall Street giant has raced with each other to tokenize their ultra-low-risk funds, such as treasuries and repos. These companies, which manage trillions of dollars, not only share BlackRock’s profit from the BUIDL token, but I think they are pursuing a much more planned common strategy.

Stable money reserves, as we know, consist of cash-cryptocurrency-treasury bonds and private company bonds. Their rates are constantly updated and managed directly by the stablecoin company. Tokens like BUIDL actually represent this reserve structure exactly. So, if Tether only keeps this token in its reserve, its reserve structure does not actually change. However, BlackRock manages the reserve instead of itself. We have gradually started to see such a change in the newly released stablecoins. By adding BUIDL-like tokens to the reserves, the connection of the stablecoin with ‘too big to fail’ companies is strengthened and the aim is to make it more attractive to traditional markets.

In the quarterly report of the US Treasury, stablecoins are compared to funds represented by tokens such as “money market fund”, that is, BUIDL, and are matched in this way. Although this is a new trend, the fact that treasury has reached such rapid adoption may suggest a strategy between the tokenization plans of Wall Street giants and treasury. Therefore, the possibility of stable money regulation specifically for the “money market fund” should not be ignored.

In the cryptocurrency market, although stablecoins are seen as “money”, it is quite understandable that the government does not want to attribute “money” to these assets. Therefore, we seem to have entered a path where stablecoins will be seen more as “funds” with a change in their definition.

Singapore has been a very active country in crypto money for a long time. Of course, being a financial hub also has a big impact here. Chainalysis’ geographical report shows a significant volume of cryptocurrency use in daily life in Singapore in 2024. While DBS, the country’s largest bank, opened an infrastructure service for corporates to enable tokenization in their payment infrastructure and campaigns, it also launched a new stablecoin specific to Singapore with Paxos.

While the private sector is accelerating its initiatives by taking advantage of the existing regulatory infrastructure, the regulator MAS announced its tokenization strategy and signaled that it will take the process to the next level. He explained that processes such as standards regarding the infrastructures of markets offering tokenization services, certain criteria regarding their liquidations, and the integration of existing payment systems into tokenization infrastructures will be worked on.

Like El Salvador and Hong Kong, Singapore is making a serious move in cryptocurrency adoption, giving strong signals about getting ahead of these much-talked-about candidates.

FTX management has initiated a new lawsuit to recover the $1.76 billion paid to Binance before bankruptcy. Binance invested in FTX and bought some of its shares at a very reasonable price in 2021. Later, the disagreements between the two started a process that led to FTX buying back these shares for $ 1.76 billion.

According to the claim in the lawsuit, Alameda, which made the buyback at that time, did not have such money. It is stated that Alameda borrowed money from FTX, and this debt was given from user balances, so Binance must repay this money.

Additionally, CZ’s tweet about selling his FTT has also been added to the file as a malicious approach.

Pudgy Penguins announced that it will release a mobile game together with Mythical Games. MakerDAO introduced the SKY brand as part of the rebranding. However, when the community had question marks about this branding, a vote was initiated on whether to continue the process. The DAO voted with 78% to continue the SKY branding. MicroStrategy announced that it had purchased another $2 billion in bitcoin. They reportedly spent a total of $11.9 billion and currently own 279,420 Bitcoins, worth over $23 billion.