New York morning trade, we are looking at a relief rally not just in the US but across the globe.
While Bitcoin initially soared above the 72,000 level on the two week US Iran ceasefire deal.
And in New York morning trade, we are looking at the crypto major holding right below that level.
Well Q1 2026 turned out to be a whiplash quarter for digital assets and Bitcoin just closed out its weakest Q1 since 2018, dropping about 22%.
And the year actually started with massive strength before.
Momentum faded and selling pressure took over that driven by escalating tensions in the Middle East and a pullback in risk markets.
Prices swung wildly, but price action is only half the story right now, and global regulation is also reaching a boiling point.
Well joining me here live at the New York Stock Exchange this morning is Dushyant Shahrawat, Bloomberg's Crypto Market Structure Lead.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me and having Bloomberg.
Well, first and foremost, we are seeing a rally here on.
Street, but it is indeed a relief rally.
So tell us what's going on in crypto so far in 2026.
Sure, so it's been, you know, many aspects, right?
So beyond crypto prices, there's a whole lot of activity going on on the institutional side, and I'll break it up into four buckets.
And of course I do want to talk a little bit about what we're seeing in the global markets because I've done some work around that.
But in particular there are 4 big areas we're seeing.
One is, and this has nothing to do with price action over the last 4 to 6 weeks, but long term trends is what we are tracking.
Massive movement into stablecoins.
A lot of activity in the Middle East on stablecoins.
We talked about that two weeks ago when I was on the show.
First of all, great news with a peace treaty and all of that, but continued use of stablecoins, as has been demonstrated during wartime.
So that's one stablecoin growth.
I looked at the March numbers $7.2 trillion of stablecoin volume processed in March alone.
That's massive.
All of last year was $35 trillion.
Second, very relevant to the New York Stock Exchange, putting equities on chain, massive 1218 months ago.
New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, TTCC were not talking about tokenization.
Now they are, so massive movement on the tokenization side.
Third, this esoteric area called decentralized finance.
A lot of activity happening there as well.
When US markets are closed, global markets are closed, traditional finance is closed, defa markets are open.
A lot of activity happening there.
Fourth, very quickly, and I hate to put two buzzwords in a blender, about the intersection of blockchain and AI, we're seeing a lot of activity in that space.
So putting agents using crypto to do agenting payments, those are the four major. have you seen in this space?
Yes, and I think it's important that you highlighted those four points here in addition to what we've been seeing in price actions.
So when it comes to the regulatory environment here in the US, what's happening in terms of progress or lack thereof?
Great.
So Ray, I'll say that let me categorize this by using an analogy that it's like the US crypto industry was a very sick patient until about 18 months ago.
The fever is broken.
But the patient is not fully on his feet as yet, and what that means is 18 months ago we were facing an SEC that had filed 100 lawsuits against crypto companies.
Chairman Atkins has turned around.
Mike Selig from the CFTC, very different economic environment.
The US is the largest crypto market, but from a regulatory standpoint we've been really behind.
Very quickly, three major things that we keep an eye on.
The Genius Act was passed last year.
That is law, cannot be overturned or can be overturned with great difficulties.
That's law.
That's great.
Beyond that, unfortunately we've got the Clarity Act which passed the House last year, still sitting in the Senate.
We don't know if that happens, whether it gets passed or not.
That has to get passed for US crypto markets and US crypto industry to be back on the rails for the long term.
The SEC CFTC interpretive release released two weeks ago clarified the role of tokens, jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC.
That is just an interpretive release that can be reversed very quickly by the new administration whenever that happens in the next couple of years.
So on one hand we've got momentum in crypto from a regulatory standpoint in the US we're still not out of the woods and there are other jurisdictions like the Middle East, hopefully we'll talk about that a little bit, Singapore.
MIA in Europe, the UK that are much further ahead when it comes to regulation, so great advancement over the last 18 months, but a lot of room to do more work in the US from a crypto-regulatory standpoint.
Yes, and you mentioned different regions across the globe, and we're watching what's happening in terms of adoption, institutional, as well as retail investor side as well.
But what's happening when it comes to the different regions in terms of actually attracting capital as well as innovation?
Yes, great question, Rey.
So there are about 6 to 7 major regional centers in the world.
And we closely track all of them.
And what was fascinating is they've all got very different takes and very different speeds and approaches to crypto regulation.
The US, we already talked about.
In the last 12 months, $4.2 trillion of new capital in the US came from fiat into crypto, $4.2 trillion.
That's four times more than anybody else despite the fact that we've got.
The regulatory clarity is not there in the US as yet.
Other regions, Europe went very quick and early.
They signed MICA, massive architectural move into the crypto space, a single passport across 27 countries.
Singapore, with the Three Arrows Capital and the Terraforma Labs problems a couple of years ago, they, they decided to focus.
There were 200 licenses in front of MAS.
Only 15 to 20 companies got approved, so Singapore has taken a large funnel and narrowed it down and said these are the companies we're going to allow it to do business in.
The one jurisdiction that Hong Kong has picked up a lot of ground in the last two years after China banned crypto a couple of years ago, crypto mining, now they've come out from the cold.
But Dubai, the UAE tends to be, and hopefully with the war, hopefully coming to an end in the next couple of weeks, they'll be back online.
But the UAE has been a beacon of hope when it comes to crypto regulation.
They created the VARRA, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, much early on.
They are absolutely the center of activity when it comes to crypto trades.
So I think keep an eye on the UAE as a major center of doing things right.
When it comes to crypto regulation, and, finally, before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here.
So I know that you speak with many institutional players out there.
So can you tell us what specific hot button issues you're paying attention to in your conversations with the clients?
Well, the hot button issue on news of this week, Remy, was Morgan Stanley's ETF, right?
Bitcoin ETF that is going to get listed today.
That is a landmark because all the other ETFs right now have been asset managers Fidelity Investments, BlackRock, Vanek.
We were all waiting for the banks to come.
Well, here's Morgan Stanley, the large bulge bracket broker dealer.
And bank launching the ATF.
That is a transformation.
That is the first major attempt by US banks to enter into the space.
I think that is going to herald a lot of other companies coming into the space, and it's yet another step of institutional appreciation and understanding about the space.
For Morgan Stanley, it's more of a wealth management play.
16,000. $6 trillion in assets under management.
Now they've got a regulated Bitcoin ETF.
Keep an eye on Morgan Stanley and other banks as they come online into the space.
Yes, absolutely.
We will be paying attention to this Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF listing on the NYSCR.
So thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, Thank you.
