Morning Minute: Trump’s Crypto Entanglements Threaten CLARITY Act Timeline

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall to new local lows, then rebound; BTC -3% at $76k
• Vitalik says the original L2 vision no longer makes sense in lengthy X post
• Y Combinator announces teams can receive $500k funding in USDC this spring
• Circle announces a $30,000 hackathon solely for AI agents
• Standard Chartered releases $2,000 SOL price target for 2030 based on micropayments domination

🏛️ Senator Murphy Accuses Trump of “Criminal Conduct” Over UAE Crypto Deal

The President’s crypto ties once again have the broader industry’s legislative push in hot water.

📌 What Happened

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) accused President Trump of “brazen, open corruption,” alleging the UAE secretly funneled $187M to Trump family entities via World Liberty Financial just days before his inauguration, then received restricted AI chip access in return.

Senator Murphy alleged “potentially criminal conduct” tied to a $500M deal where UAE-backed Aryam Investment purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial four days before Trump took office.

Per WSJ reporting, roughly $187M flowed to Trump family entities and $31M to special envoy Steve Witkoff’s family, shortly before the administration greenlit expanded UAE access to advanced AI chips that Biden had restricted.

This all happened while the White House hosted a two-hour crypto summit Monday with Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, Tether, Circle, and major banks to negotiate stablecoin yield provisions in the CLARITY Act.

No deal was reached, but the administration set a February deadline for compromise.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“That is corruption. Those are the elements of a bribe. This is potentially criminal conduct,” Murphy said on the Senate floor. He warned that “the rule of law is coming back” and that those involved “are going to jail.”

Trump told reporters Monday he was unaware of the investment: “I don’t know about it. My sons are handling that. My family is handling it, and I guess they get investments from different people.”

A World Liberty Financial spokesperson flatly denied any connection: “Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the Administration’s actions on chips is 100% false. The leftwing media is dishonestly pushing baseless innuendo.”

🧠 Why It Matters

So where does this leave us?

The crypto market structure bill that’s supposed to bring regulatory clarity is now caught in the middle of a new partisan battle.

Democrats are tying passage to anti-corruption provisions targeting Trump’s crypto businesses.

Banks are still clinging to the stablecoin provisions as a deal breaker.

And the UAE scandal is providing ammunition to anyone who wants to slow things down.

For markets: Regulatory uncertainty isn’t going away.

The bill that was supposed to provide a “foundational framework” by Q1 is now hostage to partisan warfare.

Now we wait to see if the administration can separate Trump’s personal crypto ventures from the industry’s legislative priorities…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red but rebounding after a major selloff; BTC -3% at $76K; ETH -1% at $2,250; SOL -6% at $96.4; XRP -1% at ~$1.59
• WLFI (+5%) led top movers
• Vitalik Buterin ripped up Ethereum’s L2-focused roadmap, warning some layer-2s have compromised on decentralization and shouldn’t be “branded” as Ethereum extensions
• The Epstein files revealed Jeffrey Epstein invested $500K in Blockstream’s 2014 seed round through Joi Ito’s fund and invited Adam Back to his island
• Y Combinator announced startups can receive $500K seed checks in USDC on Base, Solana, or Ethereum starting this spring
• Justin Sun’s alleged ex-girlfriend accused him of using employee identities to run coordinated Binance accounts that pumped TRX before dumping on retail
• Standard Chartered cut its 2026 SOL target to $250 (from $310) but raised long-term forecast to $2,000 by 2030; says Solana will dominate stablecoin micropayments as it moves beyond memecoin
• Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest bought $72M in crypto stocks Monday: $32.7M Robinhood, $14.6M CoreWeave, $9.4M Circle, $6.3M BitMine, $6M Bullish, $1.3M Coinbase

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw $272M in net inflows on Tuesday, though ETH squeaked by with $14M in inflows
• Galaxy Digital plunged ~16% after reporting a $482M Q4 net loss
• Kraken parent Payward posted $2.2B in 2025 adjusted revenue (+33% YoY)

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were mostly flat; DOGE +1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP -1%, FARTCOIN -2%
• Notable Solana movers: arc (+40%), Buttcoin (+14%), WhiteWhale (+26%)
• CLAWSTR run 17x on Base to $12M; RENT +10x to $2M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Circle announced a $30,000 hackathon solely for AI agents, spanning agentic commerce, OpenClaw skills and smart contracts
• Ondo received EU regulatory approval to list tokenized stocks and eTFs
• Ethena announced Exchange Points as its new rewards program for trading activity on Ethena
• Euphoria announced a 2-week tap trading competition starting Feb 16 on MegaETH
• RentAHuman.ai launched a service letting AI agents hire humans for IRL tasks paid in stablecoins (RENT

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks -2% at 27 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.2 ETH, BAYC even at 5.36 ETH; Hypurr’s -4% at 520 HYPE
• Cyberkongz (+60%) led notable movers