On January 24, 2026, following clear signals of support for digital assets from the Trump administration, the U.S. Congress collectively accelerated the legislative process surrounding cryptocurrency regulation, quickly rewriting the era of regulatory vacuum. The discussion draft of the "Digital Commodity Intermediary Act" was officially released, and the "CLARITY Act" advanced rapidly. These two legislative mainlines, focusing on commodities and securities, as well as market structure and clear definitions, are building the framework for reshaping the rules of the cryptocurrency market. Meanwhile, the token RIVER surged to $54.14, rising 27.9% in 24 hours, alongside Uniswap achieving better quotes of 56% / 62% / 67% through a new routing engine on Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum. These price movements, synchronized with protocol layer upgrades, vividly illustrate the market's early pricing for the "compliance era."
Two Major Bills Progressing Together: The Outline of Cryptocurrency Regulation Framework Emerges
● Looking at the timeline, around January 24, Eastern Standard Time, the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee was the first to release the discussion draft of the "Digital Commodity Intermediary Act," marking the legislative process surrounding cryptocurrency market structure and intermediary regulation entering the substantive text phase. At the same time, the "CLARITY Act," which focuses on asset nature definition and regulatory boundaries, is also in the preparation stage, resonating with the upcoming "key hearing on cryptocurrency market structure legislation." Galaxy Research Director Alex Thorn pointed out that next week's hearing will become a critical juncture for market structure legislation.
● More importantly, the Agriculture Committee's "Digital Commodity Intermediary Act" is clearly aimed at integrating with related legislation from the Senate Banking Committee, as the two traditional financial power centers attempt to address spot market, securities attributes, and market structure issues under a unified framework. This trend of legislative consolidation suggests that rules previously scattered across different regulatory agencies and fragmented bills may be abstracted into a systematic charter for the cryptocurrency market, leaving a clear mainline for subsequent details and regulatory division of labor.
● On the political and industry sentiment front, Senator Cynthia Lummis emphasized that the "CLARITY Act" is a key piece to "ensure the U.S. leads in the digital asset space," signaling that some forces in Washington are unwilling to lose ground in the global cryptocurrency race. Liquid Capital partner Yi Lihua bluntly stated, "The cryptocurrency structure bill is likely to pass, marking the industry's escape from severe obstacles." This resonance expectation from legislators and industry capital makes the "eventual implementation of the bill" increasingly consensus-driven in market narratives, even though specific terms and timelines remain unclear.
CFTC Takes Center Stage: Rewriting the Concept of Spot Market Regulation
● Starting from the name of the "Digital Commodity Intermediary Act" and the clues from the Agriculture Committee, regulatory weight is clearly shifting towards the CFTC, which is seen as the core regulator of the future cryptocurrency spot market. The Agriculture Committee traditionally handles legislation for commodities and derivatives regulation, and now including "digital commodity intermediaries" attempts to bring cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin under a regulatory paradigm similar to that of commodities, providing a clear authorization basis for the CFTC's involvement in spot trading, custody, and brokerage services.
● Once the CFTC receives clearer regulatory authority, intermediaries such as exchanges, brokers, and market makers will face not just rising compliance costs but an overall reshaping of business boundaries. Traditional financial modules such as license types, asset segregation, risk management, and customer suitability may be systematically introduced into the cryptocurrency intermediary framework, forcing leading platforms to transition to "regulated trading venues" and "compliant brokerage networks," while smaller institutions may be marginalized or even cleared out in terms of capital, risk control, and governance scale.
● The shift of regulatory power from a basic vacuum to centralization will also have profound impacts on the microstructure of the market. If the CFTC is granted more complete authority on the spot side, rules regarding market manipulation, insider trading, price manipulation, and large position disclosures may be replicated or modified from traditional commodity markets. For retail investors, stricter information disclosure and trading monitoring will reduce the probability of "black box liquidity" and extreme market conditions being manipulated, but it also means that access to leverage, complex derivatives, and high-risk platforms will be constrained, highlighting the tension between speculative freedom and safety protection.
Trump’s Endorsement and Congressional Tug-of-War: Cryptocurrency Legislation Becomes a Political Bargaining Chip
● After the Trump administration released a clear friendly stance, the Republican Party quickly incorporated support for digital assets into its economic and innovation narrative, promising to reduce regulatory burdens and promote innovation back to the U.S. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is seeking a balance between investor protection, financial stability, and technological competition, unwilling to be politically tagged as "anti-crypto" by opponents while also fearing that loosening regulations could lead to a repeat of the last bubble and fraud incidents, creating a bargaining space for internal division.
● The negotiations between the Agriculture Committee and the Banking Committee during the integration of the bill essentially represent a traffic rules dispute between traditional financial regulatory logic and emerging cryptocurrency forces. The Agriculture Committee is more adept at emphasizing market integrity and trading order from the perspective of commodities and market infrastructure, while the Banking Committee approaches asset class definitions and licensing issuance with a more conservative view, focusing on securities law, banking soundness, and systemic risk. This interplay will be reflected in the bill as delineations of which assets are regulated by the SEC and which by the CFTC, as well as compromises on whether new service providers are allowed to "pilot before being regulated."
● According to Alex Thorn, the upcoming key hearing on market structure legislation is likely to become the main stage for political drama in the coming weeks. Legislators, regulatory agencies, industry representatives, and scholars will publicly clash under the spotlight, with the Trump administration's supportive stance being continuously referenced, while opponents will pressure using historical risk cases. Any changes in wording, negotiations, or party shifts released during the hearing could be seen by the market as signals of policy turning points, triggering synchronized volatility in asset prices and regulatory expectations.
Institutional Funds on the Sidelines: Compliance Pathways and Product Iteration
● The assertion that "the cryptocurrency structure bill is likely to pass and will remove severe obstacles" directly points to the core barriers currently blocking large institutional funds, which are regulatory ambiguity and unclear responsibilities. Whether assets are classified as commodities, securities, or other categories, whether custody is federally protected, and whether trading venues are formally recognized—all these questions directly determine the compliance risks and capital occupation costs for large institutions. In the absence of a unified framework, most traditional financial institutions prefer to adopt a conservative stance of "technical focus, capital observation."
● Without making any predictions about specific capital scales, once the regulatory framework takes shape, the first pathways likely to open will occur in compliant custody, regulated trading venues, and standardized derivatives markets. Compliant custody will provide legal and accounting backing for incorporating digital assets into balance sheets, regulated trading venues will offer channels for compliant trading reports and liquidity access, and standardized derivatives will provide tools for hedging price volatility and managing exposures. Together, these three elements constitute the "minimum infrastructure threshold" for institutional entry.
● For traditional players such as banks, brokerages, and asset managers, the product forms and entry sequences after the new rules are implemented will also show differentiation. Asset management institutions are more likely to first test the waters through regulated fund products and structured index exposures, while brokerages will provide bridging services in brokerage and research, and banks will cautiously lay out in compliant custody, payment interfaces, and credit expansion. As the rules gradually clarify, the migration path from "over-the-counter services and convertible bond-like exposures" to "direct holding and on-chain participation" will become a key trajectory for Wall Street to explore a new order in cryptocurrency.
RIVER Soars and DeFi Infrastructure: On-Chain Projection of Regulatory Expectations
● On the same day that legislative expectations heated up, the token RIVER surged to $54.14, with a 24-hour increase of 27.9%, becoming a focal point for capital chasing. This anomaly is not isolated; the market is selectively mapping "regulatory landing expectations" onto specific narratives and tracks, betting on assets that may gain institutional benefits under a compliance framework or provide infrastructure for compliant participants, discounting the event of "being brought under rules" in advance through price.
● At the protocol level, mainstream DeFi is also actively preparing for the compliance era. According to data disclosed from a single source, Uniswap's new routing engine achieved better quote performances of 56% / 62% / 67% on the three networks of Ethereum / Base / Arbitrum, indicating that under the backdrop of multi-chain and fragmented liquidity, routing algorithms are actively evolving towards "efficient, transparent, and auditable" directions. This improvement in infrastructure efficiency provides a low-slippage, high-access execution environment for potentially onboarding regulated funds and implementing stricter compliance monitoring in the future.
● When we place the short-term surge of RIVER alongside the technical upgrades of DeFi protocols on the same timeline, the picture of "the regulatory boot has yet to drop, but the code has already acted" becomes increasingly clear. On one end, Washington is tugging at regulatory boundaries in hearings and bill texts, while on the other end, on-chain protocols are embedding higher standards of market infrastructure in routing, clearing, and risk control logic, forming a linkage between the two: regulation provides legitimacy and funding entry, while code preemptively sets up the tracks for efficiency and transparency.
The Eve of Rule Implementation: A New Game Board for Cryptocurrency and Wall Street
U.S. cryptocurrency regulation is moving from fragmentation to systematization: the Agriculture Committee and Banking Committee are integrating legislation, rearranging the functions of the CFTC, SEC, and other regulatory agencies, while the "Digital Commodity Intermediary Act" and "CLARITY Act" outline a new order in terms of market structure and asset attributes. This process not only provides clear behavioral guidelines for the U.S. but also fundamentally reshapes the pricing power of global digital assets, further concentrating the discourse on "who sets the rules and who allocates liquidity" in the hands of Washington and Wall Street.
However, in a phase where the details of the bill's terms and regulatory implementation guidelines remain highly unclear, the market is prone to discrepancies between optimistic expectations and real constraints: regulatory strictness exceeding expectations, implementation pace falling short, or political maneuvering leading to swings could amplify price volatility and emotional misalignment. In the coming weeks, the time window surrounding key hearings and the circulation of legislative texts will become the core scale for observing policy direction, with any adjustments in wording, factions, or processes rapidly reflected in asset prices through institutional layout rhythms and on-chain capital flows. For investors, what truly needs to be tracked is not just the price curve, but the dynamic coupling between political signals, compliance pathways, and infrastructure upgrades.
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