Outlook for the Week: Expectations After Trump

Trump has not yet begun his active term as president. Therefore, it is too early to say how long the promises will be kept. Despite this, moves have already begun to be made due to the new government being crypto-friendly.

Considering the community’s opinion, the first part to be expected is actually the changes regarding the SEC chairman. Generally, people at the head of institutions resign so that the new president can establish his own team. Gensler has also given signals of this and it seems that it will not cause any difficulties. In his speech, his use of past tense while talking about his proud tenure at the SEC was interpreted as a signal of resignation.

Various ETF applications are already afoot with the expectation that the new SEC chairman will not be anti-crypto. While applications for XRP were considered definitive due to the victory of the Ripple case, applications were also made for altcoins such as SOL-HBAR-APT, and the current SEC administration definitely regards all of the altcoins as securities. With this change of opinion, US stock exchanges will not be much different from cryptocurrency exchanges. We will be able to access stocks and cryptocurrencies, as well as many altcoins, from the same place. Of course, this will prevent cryptocurrencies from being treated as step children. It will show that it is as reliable and investable as other financial assets.

As a matter of fact, even the Bitcoin ETF has been extremely helpful in gaining this kind of reputation. We have seen that many pension funds, universities and states normally do not buy Bitcoin to avoid legal problems, but they can do this after the ETF. While Florida announced that it has invested $800 million, the state of Pennsylvania is discussing a bill to purchase Bitcoin with 10% of the $7 billion state reserve.

Another important issue is of course regulations. First of all, the SAB-121 regulation, which implicitly prevents banks from interacting with cryptocurrencies, is expected to be removed. Because this regulation was wanted to be abolished before Trump, it was approved by the Senate, but it was not done because it was directly vetoed by Biden. Therefore, it is thought that this issue, which even the senators agree on, can be easily put into effect.

Once SAB-121 is lifted or re-regulated, banks will now be able to benefit from the cryptocurrency trend. We can see various moves in both custody services and tokenization, as well as improvements in payment services. Thus, it will be natural for the use of cryptocurrencies in daily life to increase. Apart from these, it is also expected to establish a regulatory infrastructure suitable for cryptocurrencies by establishing a clear separation of duties between the stable money regulation and the SEC-CFTC, which is considered urgent.

The issue of public offerings is as important as ETFs. It has been rumored for a long time that Kraken will make an initiative in this regard. This attempt was suspended after he pleaded guilty to the lawsuit filed by the SEC and made the payment. Likewise, Circle has been putting its IPO initiatives on hold for a long time. After Trump, many cryptocurrency companies are expected to enter the stock market and go public.

The issue of public offerings is not limited to US companies only. Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck has received approval to list on NASDAQ. Therefore, it is almost certain that we will see many cryptocurrency-intensive stock and ETF products on US exchanges in the coming period. While ETF products directly affect cryptocurrency prices, the demand for stocks of crypto companies will also indirectly affect the price as it will strengthen the investments of these companies, and at the end of the day, the winner will be the cryptocurrency market.

In short, the cryptocurrency industry has been on the brakes for a while under the influence of knotted problems. The bullish rhetoric expressed after Trump is not only due to the upward cycle that comes after the halving. As we saw above, evaluating the current potential with cryptocurrency expansions and interacting with markets with much higher liquidity form the basis of bull market expectations. Tokenization initiatives, which have gained serious momentum recently, are not in vain. Companies managing trillions of dollars are already trying to establish the infrastructure of the new economy.

Polymarket, which made a significant impact especially in the political arena by betting on the US presidential election, was raided by the FBI after the elections. While the CEO, whose house was raided, was taken into custody, his electronic devices were also taken for examination. If we remember Trump’s statements about fraud in the previous election and before that, issues such as Russia’s interference in the elections, the Polymarket issue is not a big surprise. Again, it can be viewed as an operation carried out under the scope of intervention in elections.

Polymarket stopped providing service to the USA as a result of the lawsuit filed in 2022, but of course everyone continued to access it with VPN. It is not yet known how serious an accusation can be made since it does not legally serve the United States.

What needs to be focused on here is that the 15-year-old cryptocurrency market can create applications that can directly affect the policy of the USA, which has the largest economy in the world, in such a short time. Let’s not forget that Polymarket is not a technological infrastructure in itself, but one of thousands of cryptocurrency applications. The fact that decentralized infrastructure allows the implementation of a free market economy ensures that supply can be created against all kinds of demand. In fact, for the USA, which is so intimate with capitalism, such a free market gives an important clue about what the public demands and how obstructive the regulations are. When we look at the current US administration, it is said that the USA needs to rebuild and bureaucracy is a hindrance. Cryptocurrencies reveal this situation as transparently as possible. The fact that Polymarket is the subject of such an investigation proves to us how important a dynamic of change cryptocurrencies have become in a short time.

Tether launched its tokenization platform called Hadron. On the platform, which has been tested for several months, transactions in the classic bond tokenization style can be made. However, this platform has a much greater potential than its counterparts.

Last October, Tether announced that it acted as an intermediary in the trade of 670 thousand barrels of Middle East oil. It was stated that international payments in oil trade are made with the tokenization infrastructure provided by Tether. Tether, which declares billions of dollars of profit every quarter due to high interest rates, is becoming an increasingly reliable and respected company and is diversifying its investments.

The fact that Tether tokenizes such traditional market transactions through itself shows that Hadron can play a key role in this field. Since the intermediaries that play a role in the transfer of payments in high-volume transactions such as oil and the insurance for this trade bring serious costs, it is quite possible that Hadron will turn into a prestigious market infrastructure where all these processes are solved with smart contracts.

According to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency tax, which was planned to be 42% in Italy, has been revised to 28%. The cryptocurrency-focused lobbying organization called Stand With Crypto, supported by Coinbase, has expanded its work to Australia. In Australia, which follows the USA in terms of ETF, the aim will be to educate politicians in the field of cryptocurrency and support the sector. Lisk mainnet has become operational. Lisk, an old L1 project, now continues its life as L2. A total of 15 million LSK tokens will be airdropped for 4 months, starting from November 21st.
BUIDL is expanding to Aptos-Arbitrum-Avalanche-Optimism and Polygon. In Upbit’s license renewal research, it was seen that it approved nearly 500 thousand users without proper KYC. An investigation was launched for KYC violation. ZKsync announced that it will take 325 million ZK tokens out of the treasury and distribute them as liquidity to defi platforms. It is predicted that as the spread on the platforms decreases, demand will be seen from more users and thus income will be provided to LPs. World Liberty Financial has started Chainlink integration. It is interpreted as a signal of transition to a multi-chain structure.