---
title: 'Why the Clarity Act is running out of time'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=U0rNGDe7Zeo'
video_id: 'U0rNGDe7Zeo'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 893
---

# Why the Clarity Act is running out of time

> Source: [Why the Clarity Act is running out of time](https://youtube.com/watch?v=U0rNGDe7Zeo)

## Summary

Scott Melker's Daily Wolf covers the latest market and crypto news, including the Clarity Act's new delay and last-chance Senate window, CME's launch of 23-hour single stock futures, a flash crash in tokenized SK Hynix perps, and a Bitwise report showing blockchain usage rising while token prices fall. The episode also touches on prediction market legal battles, Bitmain's ETH accumulation, and North Korean hackers who stole from their own central bank.

### Key Points

- **Clarity Act left off Senate calendar** [01:00] — Senate Majority Leader Thune scheduled the Russia sanctions bill instead, making next week the last chance to pass the Clarity Act before recess.
- **Ethics language is the sticking point** [01:14] — The merged Senate Financial and Agriculture bill includes ethics language for the first time, but Senate Democrats needed to pass it still object, keeping odds extremely low.
- **CME launches nearly 24/7 single stock futures** [03:14] — The exchange launched 55 standard and 22 micro single stock futures trading 23 hours a day, six days a week, from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon; standard contracts cover 100 shares, micro cover 10.
- **CME's move is defensive** [04:34] — It is a reaction to crypto platforms that offer 24/7 stock trading, including pre-IPO shares, showing incumbents are trying to compete with tokenized markets rather than lead them.
- **SK Hynix perps flash crash on HyperLiquid** [05:43] — Tokenized perpetuals tied to SK Hynix dropped from $1,000 to $900 (20%) on thin liquidity before the KOSPI opened, where the stock then fell about 15%.
- **CME sues CFTC over perpetual futures** [07:43] — The exchange is challenging the regulator's approval of crypto-native perpetual futures, illustrating the incumbents' fight to slow crypto innovation and capture value.
- **Minnesota prediction market ban blocked** [09:38] — A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking Minnesota's criminalization of Kalshi and Polymarket, citing likely success of CFTC's federal preemption argument.
- **Giancarlo's middleman test for prediction markets** [11:11] — Ex-CFTC chairman Chris Giancarlo argues states can only regulate markets with a house or middleman taking a vig; binary prediction bets between individuals fall outside that model.
- **Blockchain usage rises while tokens dump** [11:49] — Bitwise data shows ETH, SOL, and AVAX fell roughly 50% while usage surged; Ethereum transactions nearly doubled to 240M but revenue fell 41% as block space became a commodity.
- **Bitmain buys ETH and buys back shares** [13:13] — Bitmain jumped 30% after more ETH purchases ahead of the Clarity Act vote, plus a share buyback financed by selling shares, echoing Michael Saylor's playbook.
- **North Korean hackers stole from their own central bank** [13:57] — Arrested hackers laundered stolen funds from a North Korean bank through crypto, sent money to China, and had cash physically smuggled back into the country.

## Transcript

pass the biggest crypto bill in American history and it still needs to go to the house. Meanwhile, the CME has launched almost 24/7 23-hour a day single stock futures and North
Korean hackers have hacked North Korea. We've got a lot to talk about today on We've got a lot to talk about today on The Daily Wolf. Let's go.
What is up everybody? Welcome to The Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your host Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf of All Streets. We have a lot of stories to cook through today. There's a lot of signal in the noise, but always a
lot of noise as well. We're going to start at the most predictable place talk about it. We've got this right here. Clarity Act faces fresh delay as Senate prioritizes Russia sanctions bill. So,
Thune has decided the Senate calendar and non-surprisingly the Clarity Act is not on it for this week, meaning that next week will be the last chance before next week will be the last chance before the recess for the United States Senate
to pass the Clarity Act. Now, as you know, we now have a merged bill that came out merging Senate Financial and Agriculture that includes ethics language for the first time, but that ethics language is still a major
sticking point for Senate Democrats who are needed to pass this act. Now, remember, not only does it need to be passed through the Senate and voted on, but it also then has to go to the house to be voted on and then the president,
to sign it, but he's also said he's not signing anything right now until they it could also uh hit that wall even if this all gets
passed. Now, I was skiing recently in Courchevel um cuz I'm fancy in France in December. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but it's literally have these like it's like Hunger Games for really rich people.
they're going to live or die, and they divert, they come back. Shortest runway stop your plane and to get it going faster. Well, the United States government, the Senate is trying to land a 747 on this thing right now.
That was my way of me saying there's a really short runway to get the Clarity Act done. But it felt good. Right? So, I would say that the odds are still extremely low. We haven't even gotten an agreement on ethics language. I just
Act here survives stablecoin yield, government ethics, partisan warfare, and out-finches faces its most dangerous opponent. Congressional vacation. that the president can actually force the Senate to skip their recess and
vacation and stay to pass essential legislation. I don't think that's going to happen, but we'll see. So, the story here is that we're the Courchevel runway trying to land an A380, and maybe it's not going to happen. Maybe there's still
that 5% chance that it will. Meanwhile, in the degenerate world of we've got this. CME launches single trade SpaceX
I highly don't recommend that. Micron and others 23 hours a day. So, that gives me an excuse to, uh, dunk on the critics and tell you that it was mathematically guaranteed when SpaceX was trading over $200 with
almost no float and sellers even available in the market, and people were retirement funds into SpaceX, and it would be trading under like 110 bucks which it is. Just that's my little I told you so from my how not to invest
segment that I did for you on SpaceX recently. But yeah, now you can trade recently. But yeah, now you can trade single stock futures 23 hours a day. I single stock futures 23 hours a day. I believe it's 6 days a week. So, listen.
It's interesting because crypto spent years obviously arguing that stocks should trade around the clock. The CME just finally agreed and capitulated, but they're doing it without putting a single stock on chain. This is using
their existing systems. They tried this in 2002 actually to launch single stock features futures and it failed spectacularly, but that was because it was in the depths of the end of a bear market in tech.
And because back then really retail was not interested in speculating with options contracts. They're not actual stocks, but they effectively will trade like them for people who are doing it. And this is clearly a reaction by the
And this is clearly a reaction by the CME to hyper liquid Coinbase, Robinhood, everybody who's offering 24/7 365 access to stock trading including pre-IPO shares. So, you're going to get 55 standard single stock futures. This is
for institutions at the CME by the way. 22 micro single stock futures. It will cover the basically most highly liquid 55 stocks. So, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Amazon, all the big names. A standard contract will be 100 shares. A micro
contract will be 10 shares. These will settle in cash and quarterly and trade from Sunday evening to I believe yes, Friday afternoon. So, hour off to clean the puke off the floor of the casino
each day while crypto keeps trading in the casino that never closes. But I I I just think that this is fascinating because clearly this is a defensive maneuver against the crypto industry that has now made trading during market
hours even on individual stocks effectively moot. We know that the future will be largely tokenized, but they're intending to compete. And in that same market we've got a crazy story. Perpetuals tied to SK Hynix hit
by flash crash to $900 on HyperLiquid. So, this is the problem that's still here exposed on the tokenized side of 24/7 365 trading tokenized stocks. You have moments where there's very little liquidity because the main market is not
tokenized version that's attached to it and can have flash crash. So, you had a 20% dip basically from $1,000 to $900 and right back on hyper liquid. And that
liquidated or they fat fingered an order that was too big and it crashed the market, but there's very thin liquidity still for some of these tokenized assets and when somebody tries to move size, it can crash the market. And then when the
KOSPI itself opened, SK Hynix went down about 15% after this had happened for actually the price action on hyper liquid forced certain traders to make decisions based on what they thought the price
would be on the actual KOSPI. Now, listen, the KOSPI was the way that Koreans are just the biggest degenerate traders and gamblers on the planet. And you remember when I told you that they were selling their
insurance and their savings to get leverage ETFs of these very assets. circuit breakers on the KOSPI, it's hard to keep up. KOSPI crashes 8% as AI chip sell-off slams Asian markets. people were obviously buying leveraged exposure
to the hottest market at the top and now they're all getting liquidated and it's breakers every day. Actually, I didn't know what the floor of the KOSPI looked like. So, I did a quick Google search of what the South Korean market
what the South Korean market trading floor looks like and here it is. They're crazy. That's Squid Game. That's Korean in case you guys missed that. So, listen, I don't know what's going on over there, the insane volatility that's
not being reflected in other markets, but very very clear going back to the beginning that the markets will become 24/7 365 everywhere and much like Squid
of the night with your position. You used to just be able to die Monday to Friday during trading hours. So now, listen uh this is a little bridge from the CME story we have right here. I told you
talking about it. We have this one right here. See, that's our trading floor, very orderly, not like that. Right? Very orderly. Inside the CME and CFTC's battle over on-chain perpetual futures. So, the story I just told you
told you that CME was actually suing the CFTC, their own regulator, over allowing perpetual futures, which is that crypto-native product, to exist because shouldn't be able to trade perpetual futures. They don't have a settlement
date and all these reasons. Well, now you can see the reason. Because they're not on crypto rails and capture the value themselves. But the battle over what all of these uh entities can do and can't do is going to
rage on. But it's a story of the incumbents trying to slow down crypto offer the products themselves. And the CFTC uh Mike Seeley, he he is the entire
Uh you know, they've been going at it with a lot of legacy legacy entities and prediction markets. And we have a story there. Minnesota cannot ban prediction markets as lawsuits play out, judge rules. So, you've seen obviously that
the CME CFTC says that they should control regulation over pushing back and banning these. Well, now that ban has been effectively lifted in Minnesota for now. So, Minnesota tried to ban prediction
markets and a federal judge predicted that Minnesota would lose. Right? And so, now you had this bill where Minnesota criminalized Kalshi and Polymarket and all of these. And the CFTC challenged the law. Now, a federal
judge is granting a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement. So, likely to succeed on their federal preemption argument if it goes to court. Now, one of the best parts of this is that a federal judge literally had to
comment on this. The court specifically raised an entertainment contract involving Love Island is the kind of market that can present a difficult legal question. Right? So, they're saying, "Hey, maybe these are
great hedging instruments that should be used into the future and they're legitimate, but maybe you shouldn't be able to trade on inside knowledge of which contestant has a threesome and gets kicked off Love
Island tomorrow." Right? So, I don't know if they do that But, it feels right. Have you guys ever watched Love Island? That's really a show. Anyways, probably shouldn't have said that.
>> So, So, prediction markets is going to be endless. Now, I highly recommend to shill my own content, this coming Sunday, I am putting out a
podcast that I just recorded with ex-CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, and we talked at length about this. And he made a very, very clear point. Of course, listen, he was the head of the CFTC. Saying, "This is the CFTC's jurisdiction
going to go to the Supreme Court, and the CFTC is going to win." And his the CFTC is going to win." And his argument was that for the states argument was that for the states basically to to be able to be the
regulator on this, there had to be a middleman. Right? A prediction market anything else, gambling, whatever you call it, that is a bet that's binary between you and me over the outcome of a prediction.
regulate things that are like casinos where there's a house in between that's keeping a vig. And obviously, the casinos and the states who are the house, they want control over this, but these contracts do not count. It really
changed my thinking about the way that these should be positioned and once basically convinced me that I was kind of wrong about something. Shocker. Scott
was wrong. Happens every day. Ask my wife. Next story. Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche get busier and cheaper even as token prices falls. This is a great report from Bitwise that kind of showed this strange phenomenon we're having in
the market where actually blockchain adoption is increasing massively, but the tokens are dumping to Hades. ETH, SOL and AVAX each fell approximately 50% or more over the past year. Meanwhile, Ethereum transactions
increased from 121 million to nearly 240 million, but the revenue on that dropped million, but the revenue on that dropped 41%. That's because there's now more block space. Basically, it's become a commodity and that has caused
even though more transactions are making far less money. Actually very good for the consumer. Solana processed nearly record transaction volume while its network revenue declined. Avalanche C-Chain transactions roughly quadrupled
to 236 million while revenue fell to approximately 330,000 dollars. So, listen, more transactions prove that people want the product, but captures the value, which has become a
captures the value, which has become a huge problem in this market, right? The tokens are priced based on speculation from previous cycles and even if their justify the price that they're trading at. I got two more quick hit stories to
get to right now. Bitmain jumped 30% on more ETH buy ahead of Clarity Act vote. So, the story here is that Tom Lee and Bitmain are financially engineering Michael Saylor is with strategy. He now owns almost 5% of all the ETH. Almost
interestingly, Bitmain also doing a huge share buyback program. They've basically been doing that all month with money that they raised by selling shares. So,
selling shares to buy shares. Uh, this is not exactly revenue. It is story that I had to get to, which is why we're cooking. North Korea arrest hackers accused of laundering stolen funds from countries bank via crypto.
So, yeah. Uh, North Korean hackers woke up one day and said, "We've been trained by our government to hack the entire crypto government. Wait, we can we can do this and keep the
money?" So, they hacked their own central bank and basically got caught. But, they hacked the central bank. They sent the China and then had people physically smuggle the money back into North Korea.
dead. I mean, this is North Korea. Uh, South Korea is the Squid Game, but North Korea is real-life Squid Game. Like 24/7 365 Right? So, listen. The CME is trying to catch up. 23-hour
trading 6 days a week. It is very clear that the future of all markets is 24/7 365. But, this show is not. We only have 15 minutes and I'm done. I'll see you 15 minutes and I'm done. I'll see you tomorrow. Peace.