Clarity

Edited by Aubrey Jesseau

Welcome back to the Beaver Bulletin, three minutes of bitcoin signal in your inbox every week.

A lot of institutional money wants to buy bitcoin. According to a Goldman Sachs survey published in January, 71% of institutional asset managers plan to increase their crypto exposure in the next twelve months. But 35% of those same institutions say regulatory uncertainty is the single biggest thing stopping them.

For years, bitcoin has existed in a U.S. regulatory grey zone. Two agencies, the SEC and the CFTC, both claimed jurisdiction with neither having clear authority. The result was regulation by enforcement, and without a rulebook, the result was a lot of lawsuits.

Banks couldn’t custody bitcoin without absorbing it onto their balance sheets. Pension funds had no legal framework to hold it. The capital sat on the sidelines because compliance departments couldn’t approve what regulators hadn’t defined.

The CLARITY Act changes this. It classifies bitcoin as a digital commodity, gives the CFTC clear jurisdiction over spot markets, creates registration pathways for exchanges, brokers and custodians, and prohibits regulators from forcing banks to treat client bitcoin as a balance sheet liability. In plain terms: it builds the legal rails for institutional capital to flow into bitcoin.

The capital sitting behind those regulatory walls is enormous. U.S. pension funds alone hold roughly $40 trillion. Add corporate treasuries, insurance capital, sovereign wealth funds, 401Ks and RIA-managed assets and you’re looking at hundreds of trillions of dollars that currently have limited or no legal pathway to hold bitcoin. A 1% allocation from just pensions and RIAs implies roughly $1.4 trillion in potential demand. At 2-3% across global institutional portfolios, estimates run to $3-4 trillion. Against bitcoin’s free-floating exchange supply of roughly 2-4 million coins, the math gets aggressive quickly.

Will they pile in overnight? No. As Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan put it, institutional adoption is “not a two-year event but a decade-long megatrend.” Risk committees don’t move with agility. Mandate changes take months or years. Bitwise expects a sharp initial rally on passage as markets price in the structural shift, followed by a long grind of actual capital deployment. They also project that ETF buyers alone will purchase more bitcoin than all new supply mined in 2026.

The CLARITY Act bill passed the House 294-134 last July. The Senate has been the holdup, though not over bitcoin. The fight is about stablecoins and whether crypto platforms can pay 4-5% yield on stablecoin balances (while savings accounts pay next to nothing). Banks are naturally terrified of losing customers and it’s a real debate, but it has nothing to do with bitcoin itself. After weeks of White House-brokered negotiations, Polymarket has passage odds at 83%. Senator Bernie Moreno, one of the bill’s leading advocates, is targeting April.

Nobody has a clean number for what the CLARITY Act specifically unlocks. What we know is the pool is massive, current allocation is tiny, the stated barrier is regulatory, and the bill removes that barrier.

At the end of the day, Bitcoin doesn’t need this bill. It worked before regulation and it will work after. But the CLARITY Act raises the ceiling. And when 35% of institutions say the law is the biggest thing holding them back, removing that barrier is bullish for bitcoin.

Enjoy another morning edition ☕

---

⚖️  Market

• Bitcoin is trading at CA$92K. Beaver Bitcoin BTC-CAD

🔍  The Clarity Act

• CFTC Chair Selig on the Clarity Act: “We want to future-proof our statutory framework for crypto. We can’t allow for a Gary Gensler 2.0 to come in and tear it all up. We’re going to get this thing across the line.” X
• Watch CNBC’s full interview with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno. YouTube
• Brian Armstrong: “Market structure is making great progress, and I believe we’re going to reach a win-win-win outcome.” X

🏛️  Institutions

• Strategy continues to buy the dip, adding another 2,486 BTC for $168.4 million at $67,710 per bitcoin. They now hodl 717,131 bitcoin. X
• Laurore Ltd. is the largest new IBIT holder. $436 million. Single holding. No website, no press. Chinese investors can’t hold Bitcoin. But they can hold a BlackRock ETF. X
• Gemini’s COO, CFO, and Chief Legal Officer have all departed “effective immediately,” per an SEC filing. The exits follow a 25% workforce cut, withdrawal from the UK, EU and Australia, and projected net losses of up to $602M for 2025. The stock is down 76% from its September IPO. A shareholder rights law firm has opened an investigation into whether Gemini’s IPO disclosures misled investors. Meanwhile, the exchange custodies billions of customer crypto assets. Don’t make me tap the sign. X
• Jane Street added $276M in IBIT shares in Q4 and crypto Twitter lost its mind. The reality? Jane Street is an authorized participant for IBIT: creating and redeeming ETF shares is literally their job. Former hedge fund manager Michael Green called the discourse “painful,” noting the position is almost entirely offset by undisclosed options and futures. X
• Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, discloses buying $100M worth of Bitcoin ETF. X
• Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin crosses 6,000 BTC in reserve as one of the faster growing Bitcoin treasuries in the world. X

📈 Trending

• The UAE says Bitcoin is a “store of value similar to gold.” X
• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says he now owns Bitcoin. X

🦫 Beaver Bites

• Watch 📺 The latest episode of Why Bitcoin Wins with OG Canadian Bitcoiner, Brad Mills. Brad says: “The DCA and buy & hold strategy has always been the best for me even since being in bitcoin since 2011.” This was a fun conversation. YouTube

---

With Beaver you have four ways to buy bitcoin, whether you’re buying for the first time or funding a corporate treasury.

• Instant Buy: from $150 to $20,000 via Interac e-Transfer.
• Recurring Buy: a fully automated buy from your bank account.
• Large Buy: up to $100,000 via bill payment or wire.
• OTC: for more than $100K there’s, Beaver Plaid.
  

---

A note on the graphic above: individuals still own the most Bitcoin at 66%. But in 2025 – for the first time – they were net sellers, offloading nearly 700,000 BTC. Institutions, corporations, and governments absorbed 829,000.

This is a structural shift to be aware of. Institutions want your bitcoin and they’ll likely go to great lengths to get it. Be wary of big stories like “Epstein was involved in Bitcoin.”

A lot of people still don’t understand Bitcoin and don’t want to, and stories like this are designed to be amplified by this same class of haters all while claiming “I told you so”.

If there’s a real story, you’ll find it here.

Shravan

---

The information provided in this bulletin is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.