TRACK MARKETS

“A US. Air Force officer who, along with another crew member ejected from a jet shot down in Iran on Friday, was rescued by US forces Sunday morning. Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard, says at least five people were killed by US and Israeli forces involved in the operation.”

“Israel is now focusing on targeting Iran's steel and petrochemical industries, which are important for Iran's economy and military. Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a video statement that Israel's military strikes in Iran have destroyed the majority of Iran's capabilities to manufacture steel.”

“President Trump has given Iran until tomorrow to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about one-fifth of the world's oil supply. Or the US will strike Iran's infrastructure. Today, he renewed that threat. In profane language, he said that otherwise Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day.”

“Assuming there's actually a ceasefire and that Iran is interested in respecting it, it's going to be at least a couple of months. Reopening of the straits will be slow because it may have been mined. Also the logistics of getting all the ships that are trapped in out and the ones that are out in will be slow.”

“Repair, there's been a lot of damage to infrastructure. We don't know how bad. Takes time to get the crew in. There's also restart. A lot of the oil fields have been damaged in Iraq and in other places. You can't turn them on fast with old infrastructure, or you can damage the fields.”

“Stylistically and from a tone perspective, there is an intentional transition from regulation by enforcement to regulation by regulation. And what I've seen that mean is they're putting out guidance, they're putting out proposed rules, they're putting out advanced notices of proposed rules, meaning they're giving a signal to the market that we might do a rulemaking on prediction limits, or prediction markets, for example.”

“The headline item is most major digital assets are now clearly in the commodity side of the regulatory categorization ledger, which is a level of certainty for market participants that lets you start to build new products, allocate capital with certainty in the United States. And you might say, well, that's been happening for years... But what we haven't seen in this space is a lot of the traditional financial services firms really dive in in a tangible way.”

“The agency always is a funding issue. It's funded by Congress. It's not funded by fees. And their staffing is limited by that budget. They can't spend more than their budget. So every year, there's this debate. CFTC have enough money. Should it have more? Should it switch to a fee model so that it can hire more staffers?”

“The CFTC announced an innovation task force on March 24th. And its stated purpose is to look at digital assets, AI, not surprising, and then prediction markets. It's going to be led by the Chairman's staffer, Michael Pasalacua, who joined Chairman Selig from private practice and has taken on a lot of the innovative agenda at the CFTC.”

“Some of the biggest pain points over the years are dual registered entities. So think of like a registered investment advisor that's also a commodity trading advisor. This is pretty much every hedge fund and asset manager. And they're regulated for the same thing, but it's not the same examination program, examination cycle, set of reports you're filing. So a lot of pain points to solve there.”