Daily Observation of Cryptocurrency Concept Stocks: Controversy Arises Over "Last-Minute Compromise" of CLARITY Act DeFi Provisions, Potential Impact on Galaxy Digital's DeFi Asset Landscape

Concerns About DeFi Provisions: The Cost of Last-Minute Negotiations

CoinDesk pointed out immediately after the CLARITY Act committee's passage that to secure cross-party support from Democratic senators and achieve a bipartisan vote of 15-9, the committee made several compromises on DeFi-related provisions at the last minute, some of which may impose stricter obligations on centralized intermediaries interacting with DeFi protocols. Specifically, the 309-page draft added cybersecurity and compliance standards for "centralized intermediaries interacting with decentralized finance protocols," but the definition of "centralized intermediaries" remains unclear, leaving significant discretion for subsequent regulatory enforcement interpretations. From a legislative technical perspective, the issue with this provision is that if regulators expand the definition to include institutional brokers and asset managers providing on-chain DeFi channels to clients, companies like Galaxy Digital, which combine traditional financial services with on-chain operations, will face the first wave of pressure.

Galaxy Digital's DeFi Exposure: Which Business Lines Face Potential Impact

Galaxy Digital's business structure spans crypto asset management (AUM $5 billion), institutional trading, AI data centers (Helios CoreWeave 15-year lease), and on-chain lending and liquidity services; its on-chain business has been integrated into mainstream Solana DeFi protocols like Kamino and Orca, and it holds tokenized $GLXY stock as collateral in a pilot experiment with Kamino Finance. If the final text of the CLARITY Act categorizes Galaxy's on-chain lending and liquidity provision business as "centralized intermediaries interacting with DeFi protocols," the company will need to establish additional compliance reporting frameworks for this part of the business, increasing operational friction costs. On a positive note, Galaxy completed its first data hall delivery for CoreWeave in April, and Q2 adjusted EBITDA has rebounded to about $90 million— the stability of AI data center contract revenue provides the company with sufficient financial buffer under DeFi regulatory pressure.

The Deeper Implications of JPMorgan's Warning: The Shrinking DeFi TVL is Undermining the Narrative Foundation of Altcoins

JPMorgan's structural judgment that "Ethereum and altcoins are lagging behind Bitcoin" forms a mutually reinforcing logical chain with the concerns over the CLARITY Act's DeFi provisions: on one hand, Solana's DeFi TVL has dropped from a peak of $13.1 billion in 2025 to about $5.5 billion, and the growth rate of Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem has also significantly slowed, indicating that the decline in on-chain DeFi activity is a real fundamental variable rather than a short-term fluctuation; on the other hand, if the CLARITY Act imposes stricter compliance obligations on DeFi intermediaries, it will further raise the operational threshold for on-chain protocols, potentially accelerating institutional outflows of DeFi TVL—this creates headwinds for Galaxy's on-chain business layout. It is worth noting that Galaxy's participation in DeFi exists more in the form of liquidity provision rather than proprietary protocol operations, and if regulation ultimately focuses on the protocol layer rather than institutional participants, the direct impact on Galaxy may be less than the market expects.

Two Key Observation Points for the Next Steps of the CLARITY Act

After the CLARITY Act passes the Senate Banking Committee, the next legislative process will go through two key points: first, the bill will merge with the version of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act that has been passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee, during which the wording of the DeFi provisions will undergo further review and revision, serving as the main window to fix the traces of last-minute compromises; second, a full Senate vote of 60 will take place, and the cross-party support from Democratic senators means that the DeFi protection provisions cannot expand indefinitely and must maintain a delicate balance between "sufficiently protecting DeFi innovation" and "sufficiently attracting Democratic support." For companies like Galaxy Digital that operate across traditional financial services and DeFi, the final wording of the merged text is the most significant source of uncertainty regarding regulatory compliance costs in H2 of this year. The White House's signing of the target on July 4 means that the legislative clock is extremely tight—every wording modification will be pushed to the full Senate vote within a very short time window, rapidly narrowing the space for continued negotiation among all parties.

Data source: https://bbx.com/ Crypto concept stock information database, compiled based on global listed company announcements and SEC/TSE disclosure documents from yesterday.