Mm.
It is week 3 of the US government shutdown.
We're well past the 3 day average for a shutdown, and the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson says we could beat the record 35 days from Trump's first term.
Well, crypto's regulatory momentum is stalled amid the shutdowns, but ETF requests won't be approved, and there's no progress on the Clarity Act.
But last week, Greyscale said.
That it's a Salon Trust product has enabled staking.
It would be one of the first bought Salana ETPs to enable staking.
And earlier this month, the SEC greenlit new generic listing standards, and in a first joint roundtable since the Dodd-Frank era, the SEC and CFTC made one thing clear the turf war is over.
Well joining me this morning is Chris.
Smith, president of the Solano Policy Institute.
Christine, good morning and thank you so much for joining us while we continue to see volatility across all asset classes.
And yesterday we saw some quiet after the largest liquidation event in crypto history.
So tell us about where we are right now and also about resilience and crypto.
Yeah, well, it's certainly a very interesting weekend for those following the crypto markets, and I think obviously the conversation going on between US and China right now around the rare earths and the various tariffs caused a pretty large reaction in the crypto market.
I think one thing that's interesting if you step back is that there were a large number of liquidations that have.
And over 19 billion, um, but if you look across cryptotechnology, particularly the decentralized finance portion where a lot of these derivatives are trading, um, and, and the reality is the technology held up very well and for Solana in particular we saw, um, increased processing like peak trafficking it oh it reached over 100k at one point, but Regularly for some time sustained above 1000 transactions per second.
So I think it's very, very exciting to see that there are also very minimal fees even during this high traffic time.
And so, um, you know, if you look at it from an infrastructure perspective that this was a stress, a stress test that that the um that the network passed with flying colors, so that's very good.
But I do think, you know, if we look overall for the.
Here that we do have a lot of exciting things happening in crypto.
We have this increased regulatory certainty that we've spoken about before running between, you know, President Trump's leadership with the enactment of the Genius Act that regulates stablecoins, and then also the SEC's project crypto.
So I think as a result we are seeing a lot of banks and asset allocators and asset issuers.
Uh, start to really look at this technology for the first time, and I think there's now a tremendous potential to upgrade the various financial rails that we use and have them all, um, you know, kind of in one place, uh, and so I think this is a huge opportunity, a huge opportunity for efficiency, and we're gonna continue, uh, to see, you know, long term positive trends, but of course these macro issues are, are gonna hit the industry every time.
Yeah, and Kristen, you do remain confident in DI regulatory progress despite this government shutdown, and there's a lot happening whether we're talking about politics or geopolitics, but give us some insight into some of the conversations that are taking place in Washington DC.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, on the crypto policy front, obviously that has slowed down with the shutdown of the government.
Certainly a short term setback.
I think a lot of these conversations will pick back up because the key problem is we have that the federal agencies over 90%.
And, um, of the market regulators, for example, at the SEC and the CFTC, uh, have, have been furloughed and so they're not able to work on, uh, things like the SEC's project crypto or the CFTC's crypto Sprint which is supposed to be providing guidance and And uh you know, listen, they've done a lot this year, so I think they're entitled to take a little break but uh it would be great to get them uh back on the payroll and and back at the office.
But there are a lot of conversations going on in Congress right now.
Um, we had a tax hearing last week, uh, there have been a lot of uh drafts going back and forth on market structure legislation and so those conversations are continuing because the legislative branch doesn't. the same sort of furlough restrictions that the executive branch does.
So I think, um, listen, we've, we've come a tremendous way this year.
I don't think at the start of the year I would have thought we would be able to get so much done by now, but there is still more work to do, um, and so I think ideally we we'll get through this shutdown uh and get back on track, uh, so that the regulatory policy staff can continue to do the good work that they've been doing.
And of course, Kristen, while I have you here, I do want to get your take on where we stand when it comes to Solana ETP.
Yeah, well, this, this is something that is a little bit of a victim of the government shutdown um because we do need to have the registration statements approved by the staff at the corporate finance division at the SEC.
And so all of those are in a holding pattern right now as you mentioned in the opening, the SEC last month approved generic listing standards, which makes it possible for other assets outside of Bitcoin and ES to be listed if they meet.
A set of clear criteria that they have laid out and so on the ETPs are on the way, we think these are going to be really great products for certain investors that, you know, aren't allowed to hold cryptospot assets themselves but need to have a securities wrapper around it.
And, you know, as I mentioned, I think we think Salon and the network is going to be the financial infrastructure of the future.
And so this is a real opportunity for those who want to be investing at this stage to be able to.
OK, Kristen, well, we will have to leave it there.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks, Rey.
