a16z crypto General Partner: Now Is the Best Time to Advance the Clarity Act

January 15 – Yonhap News Agency reports that South Korea’s National Assembly has passed amendments to the Capital Markets Act and the Act on the Electronic Registration of Stocks and Bonds, formalizing Security Token Offerings (STOs) into law. The revisions introduce an issuer custody account system, allowing qualified issuers to directly issue security tokens via blockchain technology. This will enhance the security and utility of securities through blockchain while laying a legal foundation for the issuance and circulation of new digital securities.

January 15 Per GMGN monitoring (via [link]), two meme coins with multi-million-dollar valuations have emerged in $1 pools in recent days—potentially tied to the BNB Chain’s “$1 Trading Competition.” The community widely expects winning projects to list on top exchanges, drawing heavy capital to related token pools. Two standouts—“An” and “BIG DON”—have performed strongly, but questions linger about their buying fund sources. **An** Launched two days before the competition’s announcement, An briefly topped $30 million in market cap. It surged again this morning, now sitting at ~$45.2 million (priced at ~$0.045) with a 24-hour gain of ~16%. This may stem from distributed buys from whale wallets: its top 100 holders control just 11.1% of supply—well below the 50%+ typical for meme coins across blockchains. **BIG DON** Launched today, BIG DON spiked immediately: over 90 suspected affiliated addresses rushed to buy simultaneously within ~10 minutes, pushing its market cap past $

January 15 After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, the situation has moved counter to former President Trump’s expectations. The likelihood Powell will remain chair through his May 2028 term end has ticked up, while odds that Kevin Warsh—a more hawkish candidate for next Fed chair—will overtake Trump ally Kevin Hassett have risen. Trump may find himself playing a game of wits with the Fed all year. Polymarket data shows that shortly after Powell’s January 11 video response to the probe, odds he’ll leave the Fed board by May end or year-end plummeted. Currently, investors peg his May 30 departure chance at 45%—down from 74% earlier this month—while his year-end departure likelihood has slid from 85% to 62%. The prediction market has also revised expectations for Hassett’s nomination. As DOJ investigation news spread, Warsh has gained ground on Polymarket, overtaking Hassett. Policy analyst Dan Clifton notes that since

On January 15th, Xunlei (Nasdaq: XNET) restarted a lawsuit against former CEO Chen Lei and his core team, alleging they infringed the company’s interests and seeking up to 200 million yuan (≈$27.8M) in damages. The case has been accepted and filed by a relevant court in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. This follows Xunlei’s September 2020 announcement accusing Chen of embezzling millions of yuan in company funds for cryptocurrency speculation, and arranging relatives to fabricate contracts to siphon additional funds. Chen left China with his lover in April 2020. Chen was appointed Xunlei Group CEO in June 2017. One month later, Xunlei rebranded its Money Cat product to Wanke Cloud, launched the Wanke Coin cryptocurrency, and shifted from a cash subsidy model to rewarding users with crypto for shared resources. Some 4 million Money Cat users became Wanke Cloud miners, driving Wanke Coin’s price to surge from 0.01 yuan to over 10 yuan on trading platforms. In 2017, daily revenue from Wa

January 15th — Per monitoring from HyperInsight (Telegram: @HyperInsight), the "Big Brother Whale" address Lil Bubble has been trimming its ETH long positions over the past 30 minutes. Current positions: - Holds 9,620.13 ETH long positions with 25x leverage (~$32.03M), average entry price $3,217.71, floating profit ~$1.07M; - Holds 310,000 HYPE long positions with 10x leverage, average entry price $25.62, floating loss ~$194k.

**January 15 —** Zou Lan, spokesperson and deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), announced at a State Council Information Office press conference today that rates for various structural monetary policy tools have been cut by 0.25 percentage points. The annual interest rate for all reloans has been lowered to 1.25%, with rates for other tenors adjusted accordingly. Enhancing structural tools and boosting support will further help optimize economic structural transformation. Zou added that there remains room for reserve requirement ratio (RRR) cuts and interest rate reductions this year. On the RRR front: the current average statutory deposit reserve ratio for financial institutions stands at 6.3%, indicating room for further cuts. For policy rates: externally, the RMB exchange rate is currently relatively stable, and the U.S. dollar is in an interest rate-cut cycle, so the exchange rate does not pose a significant constraint. Internally, since 2025, banks’ net interes