This week, under the Eastern Standard Time Zone, the United States SEC exemption order, the latest statements from Federal Reserve officials, and pricing data from exchanges are all making headlines simultaneously, pulling the cryptocurrency market between the two main lines of regulation and funding. On one hand, the SEC has issued an exemption order to WisdomTree's tokenized fund, symbolizing a further "limited opening" of traditional finance to on-chain assets; on the other hand, the Fed acknowledges that it has become harder to read the economy under the impact of AI, making the outlook for monetary policy increasingly unclear, and the valuations of risk assets are fluctuating accordingly. In the context where Coinbase's Bitcoin premium index has been in negative territory for 40 consecutive days, and Filecoin's daily income is only about $4 while maintaining a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of over a billion dollars, the atmosphere of contradiction emerges with the combination of relaxed regulation and a reversal in funding sentiment: is capital quietly retreating or reorganizing its positions and waiting for the next narrative?
Signal of SEC Exemption for WisdomTree's Tokenized Fund
● Basic facts and background: According to public information, the U.S. SEC has issued an exemption order to WisdomTree's tokenized fund, allowing it to operate in a more flexible manner under the existing regulatory framework. This action continues the path of Wall Street asset management institutions testing the boundaries of "tokenization," and is consistent with the previous trend of traditional funds registering shares on-chain and using blockchain for pilot clearing, marking a shift of tokenized assets from concept to limited implementation.
● Symbolic significance of tokenization and Wall Street's participation: The SEC's exemption is not just a regulatory loophole for a single product but also an indirect endorsement of asset tokenization (RWA). For Wall Street, this is equivalent to tearing open a "compliance channel" during a period of intense enforcement, enabling large institutions to continue betting on the improvement of on-chain infrastructure and clearing efficiency without touching high-risk gray areas of public chains, providing a template for more bonds, funds, and note-type assets to go on-chain later.
● Considerations of "limited release" of regulatory boundaries: The signal released by the exemption is that regulation is no longer a simple one-size-fits-all approach but rather a controlled release of experiments that are highly coupled with the existing financial system. Politically, this helps address the demands of Wall Street and technology lobbying groups for innovation space; in the market, it delineates "safe testing grounds," allowing compliant funds somewhere to go while maintaining a high-pressure stance on unlicensed trading and issuance behavior, striking a balance between "not endorsing coin prices" and "not crushing financial innovation."
Federal Reserve's Wait-and-See Stance and AI Confusion: Increasing Macro Noise
● Bostic's statement: Recently, Federal Reserve official Bostic publicly stated that the AI-driven economic structural transformation will make it harder for the Fed to understand economic dynamics. This means that the traditional employment, productivity, and price transmission models it relies on may fail under the wave of AI, leading to increased "noise" in macro data, making it more difficult for policymakers to judge whether the economy is overheating or slowing down.
● Uncertainty in monetary policy and volatility in crypto: Against this backdrop, the Fed is more likely to lean towards "data dependency + ad hoc decision-making," increasing market divergence over future interest rate paths. For risk assets, including cryptocurrencies, this uncertainty will amplify variations in interest rate expectations, increase the volatility of discount rates, making asset prices more sensitive to individual data points and statements, further exaggerating volatility, and frequently recalibrating the "risk appetite premium" in the crypto market.
● Underlying notes of macro noise and cautious sentiment: As AI makes macro readings more difficult to interpret, and policies can be repriced at any moment, institutions' typical response in crypto assets is to shorten holding periods and raise liquidity requirements, reducing exposure to high-narrative, low cash flow projects. This potential positions contraction and term mismatch have laid the groundwork for subsequent premium inversions and revaluation of specific currencies.
Coinbase's Negative Premium and the Waning Buying Power in the U.S. Market
● Negative premium phenomenon and implications: Research briefs indicate that the Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has been negative for 40 consecutive days, meaning that Coinbase's price in the U.S. market is trading at a discount relative to other major markets. Historically, a positive premium often corresponds to active buying by U.S. retail investors and some institutions, while sustained negative premium implies weak marginal buying from the U.S. market, with some capital choosing to reduce holdings during price surges.
● Possible reasons for changes in retail and institutional buying: Behind the sustained negative premium, on one hand, U.S. retail investors have significantly reduced their risk appetite under high volatility and regulatory shadows, decreasing direct purchases with fiat currency; on the other hand, institutions, while interest rates hover at high levels and U.S. stocks and AI assets have strong appeal, may lean towards allocating to assets supported by cash flows and profit models, maintaining restraint on high-volatility, regulatory uncertainty crypto assets, thereby weakening the traditional "U.S. market support" force.
● Competition for critical price levels magnifying tensions: The market generally believes that whether Bitcoin can stabilize around critical integer levels or break downward in the coming days will influence the medium- to short-term trend. The "critical price battle" noted by 10x Research, in the context of a negative premium, carries significant weight: once the price level is breached, it may reinforce risk aversion among U.S. investors; conversely, if it holds and rebounds, there will be opportunities to attract bottom-fishing capital back, narrowing the negative premium will also amplify the strength of price reversals.
Filecoin's Daily Income of $4 and the Collapse of Public Chain Narratives
● Stark reality presented by data comparison: Research briefs reveal that Filecoin currently generates only about $4 in daily income, yet its fully diluted valuation (FDV) still stands at approximately $1.716 billion. This extreme contrast starkly unveils the gap between "on-chain cash flow" and "secondary market valuations"—in the absence of real demand support, the project’s token still maintains a valuation in the billion-dollar range.
● The disparity between narrative and actual usage: The early market once packaged Filecoin as a pioneer of the "distributed storage revolution," hoping it would take on the foundational infrastructure of Web3 data storage. However, judging from its currently extremely low daily income, actual on-chain storage and payment demand have yet to reach a scale that supports enormous valuations, with a large number of nodes and storage capacity existing "to mine tokens," and the expansion of commercialization and developer ecosystems is clearly misaligned with the grand narratives of the past.
● Repricing from FIL extended to the public chain track: Taking FIL as a sample, one can glimpse the situation faced by an entire public chain track: in an environment of tightening macro liquidity and regulation leaning towards compliant assets, high FDV projects lacking verifiable cash flow and rigid demand are facing systemic valuation pressure. As funds increasingly scrutinize the "income-valuation" ratio, not only in the storage track but many public chains that primarily rely on technological narratives, with unclear commercialization pathways may experience a long valuation regression and multiple rounds of value-killing.
RedotPay's Plans for U.S. IPO and Capital Path Choices
● Plan for U.S. IPO and fundraising scale: Amid the ongoing regulatory gloom, the payment-related company RedotPay is still considering an IPO in the U.S. this year, aiming to raise over $1 billion. This scale is not small in the current market environment, reflecting its high trust in the liquidity and pricing power of the U.S. capital market, and it also reflects that the traditional financial market remains the "destination" most valued by crypto-related companies.
● The logic of betting on the U.S. under high-pressure regulation: Although the SEC maintains a high-pressure stance on trading and issuance, companies like RedotPay that lean towards payment and compliant financial services may actually benefit from regulatory clarity. By going public in the U.S., it can demonstrate to institutional investors that its business model operates within a compliance framework, thereby obtaining lower financing costs and broader collaboration channels, which is more sustainable than expanding trading businesses in regulatory gray areas and easier to gain access to banks and large merchants.
● Shift from traditional IPOs to on-chain financing paths: Compared to early projects that were enthusiastic about ICOs, IEOs, and other on-chain financing methods, RedotPay has chosen traditional IPO + compliance narrative. This reflects a significant shift in capital strategy for crypto companies: as regulation tightens and on-chain financing suffers from trust discounts, more and more enterprises are willing to sacrifice some degree of freedom in exchange for regulatory certainty and institutional capital recognition, reshaping themselves from "speculative token targets" to "financial technology companies with clear income and regulatory identities."
Relaxation of Regulation and Capital Outflow: The Main Battlefield of the Next Round of Games
● Market landscape summarized from clues: Overall, the SEC's exemption for WisdomTree's tokenized fund, the Federal Reserve facing greater uncertainty in the AI era, Coinbase's prolonged negative premium on Bitcoin, and the significant disparity between income and FDV for FIL and other single currencies collectively outline a picture: regulation is not unidirectionally tightening but is relaxing in the direction of compliant assets and tokenization; meanwhile, capital enjoys regulatory dividends while quietly withdrawing from narratives that are overvalued and exhibit weak cash flow.
● Migration of capital from old narratives to new tracks: In this pattern, capital is likely to retreat from projects like Filecoin, where income struggles to match valuations, and instead flow towards tracks that are more friendly to regulation and have clearer business models and cash flows, such as RWA, on-chain payments, compliant custody, and infrastructure services. At the same time, projects capable of connecting with ETF issuers, traditional exchanges, or the banking system are more likely to become new containers for capital "inventory changes," enjoying the dual benefits of policy relaxation and institutional entry.
● Future focal points and key signals of the game: In the coming period, the market's core battles will revolve around three types of signals: first, whether the regulatory side will continue to extend exemptions and guidance along the lines of tokenization and compliant financial services; second, whether the macro side changes in the Federal Reserve's actual interest rates and rhetoric under uncertainty will trigger an overall repricing of risk assets; third, on the capital side, the key price levels of Bitcoin and whether Coinbase's premium can turn positive, as well as whether high FDV projects' secondary market will further "vote with their feet" before there is a noticeable improvement in on-chain income. For investors, the real opportunities might not lie at the peak of emotions, but rather in the slow reconstruction process where regulation and capital are re-anchored.
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