Today in crypto, Michael Saylor says Strategy is unlikely to look at acquiring other Bitcoin treasury firms as there’s too much uncertainty. US lawmakers are pushing to advance the crypto market structure bill despite the ongoing government shutdown and Standard Chartered forecasts real-world assets could surge to $2 trillion by 2028.
Saylor says Strategy unlikely to scoop up rivals, ‘just a lot of uncertainty’
Strategy chairman Michael Saylor says his company isn’t interested in acquiring other Bitcoin treasury companies, as doing so is fraught with uncertainty, although he didn’t entirely rule it out.
“Generally, we don’t have any plans to pursue M&A [merger and acquisition] activity, even if it would look to be potentially accretive,” Saylor told investors on Thursday during Strategy’s third-quarter earnings call.
“There’s just a lot of uncertainty, and these things tend to stretch out six to nine months or a year,” he added. “An idea that looks good when you start might not still be a good idea six months later.”
Saylor didn’t totally rule out an acquisition, however, giving Strategy some wiggle room to change its mind on the topic.
“I don’t think we would ever say ‘we would never, never, never, ever,’ but what we would say is the plan, the strategy, the focus is to sell digital credit, improve the balance sheet, buy Bitcoin and communicate that to the credit and the equity investors,” Saylor said.
Strategy CEO Phong Le added that mergers and acquisitions for software companies, Strategy’s main business, are “very difficult.”
Amid US gov’t shutdown, lawmakers work to pass market structure: Report
Many US senators are reportedly moving to advance a bill for crypto market structure rules amid a government shutdown with no end in sight.
According to a Bloomberg report published on Thursday, several Republicans in the Senate, including those with leadership positions on key committees, plan to pass legislation on digital asset market structure by the end of the year, in line with their initially announced timeline.
Despite thousands of government employees being furloughed across several agencies amid the shutdown, members of Congress continue to receive their paychecks and are permitted to conduct business in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
John Boozman, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, reportedly said he was negotiating with Democrats to release a bipartisan bill on market structure “very, very soon,” with a plan to pass the legislation before 2026. Others on the Senate Banking Committee — the other body that needs to approve the bill once it’s ready for consideration — picked up bipartisan talks, with a possible deal being announced in a matter of weeks.
The legislative fight began with the passage of the CLARITY Act in the House of Representatives. After being passed in July as part of Republicans’ “crypto week” plans, party leaders in the Senate said they would “build on” the bill to create their version of crypto market structure under the title the Responsible Financial Innovation Act.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill’s most outspoken backers, said in August that she hoped the legislation would be considered by the Agriculture Committee by the end of September and the Banking Committee by the end of October, with US President Donald Trump expected to sign it into law by 2026. One committee deadline has since passed, and the other benchmark is unlikely to occur during the shutdown.
Standard Chartered sees $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by 2028, matching stablecoins
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) may reach a cumulative value of $2 trillion in the next three years as more global capital and payments migrate onto more efficient blockchain rails, according to investment bank Standard Chartered.
The bank said in a Thursday report shared with Cointelegraph that the “trustless” structure of decentralized finance (DeFi) is poised to challenge the dominance of traditional financial (TradFi) systems controlled by centralized entities.
DeFi’s growing use in payments and investments may bolster non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs to a $2 trillion market capitalization by 2028, the investment bank predicts.
Of the $2 trillion, $750 billion is projected to flow into money-market funds, another $750 billion into tokenized US stocks, $250 billion into tokenized US funds, and another $250 billion into “less liquid” segments of private equity, including commodities, corporate debt and tokenized real estate.
“Stablecoin liquidity and DeFi banking are important pre-requisites for a rapid expansion of tokenised RWAs,” said Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, who added:
“We expect exponential growth in RWAs in the coming years.”
Reaching a $2 trillion market capitalization implies an over 57-fold growth for RWAs in the next three years from their current $35 billion cumulative value, according to data from RWA.xyz.
