To The Moon

Digital currencies tied to crypto trading and asset tokenization have surged in recent days. Despite a landmark crypto bill failing to advance in the US Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are leveraging existing regulatory authority to keep pushing digital asset market reforms, boosting investor confidence in related infrastructure projects. Among the standout movers, HYPE, the native token of decentralized derivatives platform Hyperliquid, climbed to a record $96 on Monday, pushing its market value past $20 billion. Over the past week, Uniswap's UNI has gained roughly 40%, Avalanche's AVAX is up about 47%, Ethena's ENA has risen around 50%, and ONDO, the token of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization specialist Ondo, added about 26%. At the same time, Bitcoin extended its rebound, briefly breaking above $87,000 to hit an eight-month peak.

SEC greenlight for tokenized stocks

A key catalyst for this rally came from US regulators. The SEC last week introduced an "innovation exemption" that grants qualified tokenized securities trading venues a temporary, conditional five-year regulatory reprieve, allowing certain US-listed stocks to trade on-chain in tokenized form. Under the SEC's framework, eligible venues can match buyers and sellers through licensed automated market makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools for compliant tokenized US National Market System (NMS) stocks. These tokenized equities must confer the same rights and benefits as traditional shares, including dividends and voting rights. The move is seen as a significant step by US traditional capital markets toward embracing blockchain infrastructure, directly lifting crypto projects tied to on-chain trading, liquidity, and real-world asset tokenization.

Notably, the SEC's action came just days after Congress failed to advance the CLARITY Act. This means that with new crypto market-structure legislation temporarily stalled, US regulators are trying to use their existing statutory powers to continue implementing certain crypto policies. SEC Chairman Atkins made clear that this action was taken under the agency's legal authority to push US capital markets on-chain after lawmakers failed to move the bill forward. Ayesha Kiani, chief operating officer at Monarq Asset Management, said the SEC and CFTC are actually becoming more proactive in using their existing powers to build a regulatory framework for the digital asset industry. She noted that regulatory actions cannot replace the long-term certainty of formal legislation, but they at least make the market more confident that the US digital asset regulatory environment is still progressing rather than slipping back into prior uncertainty.

The CFTC is also advancing its crypto oversight agenda. Meanwhile, more applications for on-chain perpetual futures tied to traditional assets are emerging in US derivatives markets. Public filings show that several products, including single-stock perpetual futures, have recently entered the regulatory approval pipeline.

Not a broad 'altcoin season' – capital concentrates in infrastructure tokens

Unlike past crypto bull markets where a wide range of small tokens rallied broadly, this cycle shows a distinctly structural pattern. Capital is mainly flowing into projects tied to digital asset market infrastructure, decentralized exchanges, derivatives, and real-world asset tokenization, rather than lifting all small cryptos indiscriminately. Carlos Guzman, vice president of research at GSR, said the rally is happening against a backdrop of broader risk-appetite improvement, with tech stocks also strengthening. He noted that after last week's Federal Reserve rate hike announcement, market risk sentiment actually improved. While the decision itself was hawkish, it was widely anticipated, so its delivery helped remove some uncertainty about the interest-rate path for the rest of the year.

Hyperliquid emerges as biggest winner with $8.3 billion in open interest

Hyperliquid has been one of the most standout performers in this wave. Data shows the decentralized derivatives platform now has roughly $8.3 billion in open interest across its contracts. Meanwhile, trading activity in perps linked to traditional assets like stocks has grown noticeably on the platform this year. Hyperliquid is also moving closer to the US market. Kraken's parent company, Payward, said last week it plans to offer on-chain perpetual futures to US customers, with the first market to be built on Hyperliquid's infrastructure. This has reinforced expectations that Hyperliquid could become one of the key on-chain infrastructure venues for traditional asset derivatives, helping HYPE hit an all-time high.

Other tokens that rose are benefiting from different parts of the digital asset ecosystem. UNI is the native token of the decentralized spot exchange protocol Uniswap, while ONDO is tied to the Ondo platform focused on real-world asset tokenization. With the SEC providing a compliant path for tokenized US stocks to trade on-chain, these projects directly linked to trading, liquidity, and asset tokenization are drawing investor attention. Joshua Lim, co-head of global markets at FalconX, said the SEC exemption creates a compliant route for AMMs to provide liquidity for tokenized equities, and the market is now seeing high-conviction capital shifting toward blockchain networks like Avalanche.

Regulatory logic shifts – traditional finance 'on-chain' expectations heat up

Looking further out, the core logic driving this rally isn't just that regulators have turned friendlier toward crypto, but that the US regulatory framework is beginning to provide clearer pathways for traditional financial assets to enter blockchain markets. The SEC said the five-year exemption is a temporary arrangement designed, in part, to let the market experiment with on-chain tokenized stock trading in a controlled environment while gathering experience for developing longer-term rules. Therefore, the concentrated rise in tokens like HYPE, UNI, AVAX, and ONDO reflects investors betting on a more specific trend: if stocks, derivatives, and other real-world assets migrate further on-chain, blockchain infrastructure for trade matching, liquidity, settlement, and asset tokenization could become direct beneficiaries.

That said, the current rally remains largely confined to this niche and has not yet become a broad small-token upswing across the entire crypto market. Whether the rally can broaden further will still depend on the actual implementation of US regulatory policies, the degree of participation from traditional financial institutions, and whether on-chain tokenized asset trading volumes can keep growing.