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Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team,
SpaceX just pulled off the biggest IPO in history.
$75 billion raised. A $2 trillion valuation at the open. Shares priced at $135, trading as high as $168.75. Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire before lunch.
Here’s the part most people missed: SPCX went live on Solana the same day. Tokenized shares, issued by Backpack Securities, redeemable for the real thing, trading 24/7. The biggest IPO ever was also the first to debut on Nasdaq and a blockchain simultaneously.
And while SpaceX owned the front page, Mastercard and Visa quietly gave AI agents their own payment rails. Within hours of each other. Agent credentials now live on Solana, Polygon, and Base. Settlement runs in stablecoins.
Wall Street got its biggest listing ever. Machines got their first credit cards. Same week.
Here’s what moved:
* SpaceX listed twice on the same day
* Citi tokenized the pre-IPO market
* Mastercard launched Agent Pay for machines
* Visa gave AI agents a credit score
* Japan’s megabanks picked one stablecoin
* Wall Street wrote a $355M check to its own blockchain
* A $300M crypto unicorn sold for $10M
And 9+ more signals below.
TOP BOARDROOM READS
* Digital Assets: A strategic playbook for banks (BCG)
* Wholesale banking reckons with the rise of digital assets (Oliver Wyman)
* Handbook: Crypto assets (KPMG)
* Banks Evaluate Opportunity and Threat of Digital Assets (Morgan Stanley)
* Inside JP Morgan’s $3T tokenization machine, with Dennis Cristallo, Head of Wealth Management at Kinexys, JPMorgan (51)
* Tokenization 2030 (Citi GPS)
* Beyond Stablecoins: The Emerging Architecture of On-Chain Money (McKinsey)
* Towards an Efficient and Integrated Digital Capital Market in Europe (ECB)
* Tokenized Finance (IMF)
* Effects of Stablecoin Yield Prohibition on Bank Lending (White House CEA)
* Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers (BCG)
US Banks are going on-chain
The Clearing House (TCH), the payments operator owned by 25 of the largest US banks, will run the network. It connects traditional rails (RTP, CHIPS) to blockchain infrastructure for 24/7 atomic settlement, with use cases spanning programmable treasury, real-time liquidity, cross-border payments, and agentic commerce. “A big move for the banks,” TCH CEO David Watson told the WSJ; the industry faces a “radically different” future in on-chain payments. The release names 17 participants, including BNY, HSBC, PNC, Truist, TD Bank, and U.S. Bank. One detail buried in the coverage: no blockchain partner has been selected yet. The build, in any meaningful sense, has not started. [RELEASE] [ANALYSIS]
Why it matters: McKinsey modeled it in May: when a corporation moves $1,000 into a third-party stablecoin, only $150 returns to the banking system as wholesale reserves. The other $850 buys T-bills off bank balance sheets. Tokenized deposits keep the full $1,000 on the bank’s balance sheet, preserving credit capacity. The Bank Policy Institute went further on May 8. Applying an industry-sponsored model to the projection that stablecoins reach ~$4T by 2030, BPI calculates deposits would first rise by $300B, then fall by $4T. Net result: $3.7T in destroyed deposits and a 19% decline in bank lending. A December Fed note by Jessie Jiaxu Wang points the same direction: credit supply likely shrinks, lending costs likely rise.
Citi tokenizes the pre-IPO market
What happened: Citigroup launched a blockchain-based platform that lets wealthy and institutional clients trade tokenized shares of private companies. The product, Digital Depositary Receipts, adapts the 100-year-old depositary receipt structure for private markets. Citi acts as both issuer and custodian, with the receipts recorded on blockchain infrastructure run by Swiss exchange operator SIX. [WSJ] [CoinDesk]
Why it matters: The structure is the story: a depositary receipt is a trust wrapper investors already understand, and putting it on-chain makes it transferable in ways paper private placements never were. A week after Goldman tokenized a real estate fund on GS DAP, a second bulge-bracket bank is turning tokenization into a distribution product, not a back-office experiment. Private markets access is becoming the first consumer-facing use case of institutional tokenization.
AI agents got payment rails this week
What happened: On the same day, the two largest card networks launched infrastructure for AI agents to transact. Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), an open protocol that lets AI agents authorize, coordinate, and settle transactions autonomously, including micropayments worth fractions of a cent. Agent credentials and spending permissions are stored on public blockchains: Polygon, Solana, and Base. 31 launch partners include Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen, and Cloudflare. Settlement runs in traditional currencies or stablecoins. Hours later, Visa announced Agent Scoring, an Agentic Registry, a Large Transaction Model, and a collaboration with OpenAI at Visa Payments Forum, plus expanded stablecoin settlement now running at a roughly $7 billion annualized rate with 160+ stablecoin-linked card programs live or in development. [Mastercard] [Visa]
Why it matters: Note where the trust layer lives. Mastercard is putting agent credentials on public blockchains, not in a private Mastercard database. That is a card network admitting that machine-to-machine commerce needs neutral, always-on infrastructure that no single company controls. The same week, Tether announced it will embed its wallet development kit directly into NEURA’s humanoid robots so machines can get paid for completed tasks. Three independent announcements, one direction: AI agents are becoming economic actors, and stablecoins are their native currency. Visa’s Jack Forestell said it plainly: “AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end.”
Japan goes all in: megabank stablecoin plus a new rulebook
What happened: MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho signed a memorandum of understanding to issue a joint yen stablecoin, targeting live corporate transactions in fiscal 2026 and issuance by March 2027. The structure: the three banks act as joint settlors under a trust agreement, building on a pilot Japan’s FSA approved in November 2025. One day later, Japan’s lower house passed a sweeping amendment to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act that reclassifies crypto as financial instruments. The package: an insider trading ban that mirrors equities rules, a flat 20% tax replacing rates up to 55%, annual issuer disclosures, maximum prison terms for violations rising from 3 to 10 years, and a path toward crypto ETFs. [CoinDesk]
Why it matters: The world’s third-largest banking system delivered both halves of the institutional playbook in 48 hours: the rails and the rules. The megabank stablecoin is explicitly defensive. Tokyo wants yen-denominated settlement infrastructure in place before USDT and USDC entrench any further in Asian corporate finance. The FIEA reclassification is the offensive half: cutting the top tax rate from 55% to 20% and opening the ETF door is how you bring domestic capital back onshore. Compare that with the US, where banks are still lobbying over GENIUS Act implementation details. Japan is now the cleanest test case of what coordinated bank issuance plus securities-grade rules looks like.
Wall Street writes a $355M check to its own blockchain
What happened: Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton Network, raised $355 million led by a16z crypto, which put in $100 million. Read the rest of the cap table: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, ABN Amro, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, S&P Global, SBI Group, Tradeweb, Optiver, William Blair, and more. Canton is a public, permissionless Layer 1 with configurable privacy built for regulated finance, running applications written in Digital Asset’s open-source Daml language. The capital goes toward expanding the Canton ecosystem and onboarding more institutions, assets, and regulated workflows. [PR Newswire]
Why it matters: This investor list is not a venture bet. It is a user list. Exchanges (CME, Tradeweb), banks (HSBC, BNP Paribas), market makers (Citadel Securities, Optiver), data (S&P Global), and sovereign wealth (ADIA) are funding the infrastructure they intend to settle on. We saw the same pattern in Issue 181: Visa is already piloting private stablecoin settlement on Canton. The privacy architecture is the differentiator. Institutions will not put real positions on a chain where competitors can read their flow. Purpose-built, privacy-enabled infrastructure keeps winning institutional volume over general-purpose chains, exactly the thesis of our Money Movement 2.0 report.
🚀 Build credibility. Drive pipeline. Win in digital assets. We produce institutional-grade research that positions you as the authority in your category, then distribute it to 100,000+ decision-makers who act on what we publish.
A $300M crypto unicorn just sold for $10M
What happened: Blockworks bought Messari for a little over $10 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. Messari was valued at $300 million in 2022. That is a 97% wipeout. The crypto research firm raised $61 million in total funding, including a $35 million Series B led by Brevan Howard’s crypto arm with Point72 Ventures backing. It just sold for less than a third of that one round. The deal folds Messari’s brand, client list, and data pipelines into Blockworks, which raised at a $192 million valuation earlier this year with the stated plan of becoming crypto’s Bloomberg through acquisitions.
Why it matters: The WSJ blames the bear market. We don’t buy it. Crypto M&A has not collapsed: companies struck 144 deals worth $11.8 billion this year, up from 2025. The capital is still there. It stopped flowing to companies without a clear position. Crypto research has two revenue streams, funds paying for subscriptions and protocols paying to get covered, and both suffer in a downturn. Distressed data businesses sell for 1-2x revenue. Do that math backwards from $10 million. Blockworks did not buy a P&L. It bought a brand, a client list, and data pipelines for the price of a seed round. The 2022 investors did not misprice a company. They mispriced an entire business model.
PRO Stories this week:
NEWS FLASHES
Infrastructure and Markets
* SpaceX lists twice on the same day. SpaceX raised $75 billion in the largest IPO in history, opening at a ~$2 trillion valuation, while tokenized SPCX shares issued by Backpack Securities went live on Solana. Redeemable for underlying shares, tradeable 24/7, self-custody compatible.
* BlackRock’s yield bitcoin ETF is imminent. BlackRock filed a fourth, likely final amendment for the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA). Covered calls on IBIT, 65bps fee, undercutting incumbent covered-call products at 95-99bps.
Regulation and Policy
* CFTC proposes its first prediction markets rule. The agency seeks public comment on a framework for reviewing event contracts tied to war, terrorism, gaming, and unlawful activity. A formal 90-day review process replaces case-by-case improvisation.
* UK funds get a 10% crypto allowance. The FCA proposed letting UK UCITS and some retail funds hold up to 10% in crypto ETNs. Comments due July 13.
* Banks push back on GENIUS Act scope. The Bank Policy Institute, The Clearing House, and the Consumer Bankers Association argued in a joint comment letter that stablecoin AML rules should also cover secondary markets, where most illicit activity happens. Full GENIUS Act implementing rules take effect July 18.
Banking and Payments
* Ripple and Bitso put the peso on-chain. Bitso’s regulated MXN stablecoin MXNB launches on the XRP Ledger alongside RLUSD, targeting the $60B US-Mexico corridor. Bitso Business already moves $82B+ in annualized volume.
* DBS brings tokenized gold to retail. Singapore’s largest bank will offer tokens backed 1:1 by grams of vaulted physical gold via its digibank app in H2 2026. Issued, distributed, and custodied entirely in-house.
Funds, Deals and Others
* Figure buys Kiavi for $717M. The blockchain lender acquires the AI-powered real estate lending platform, adding $7B+ in annual loan volume to its tokenized marketplace. A ~$200B origination opportunity moving on-chain.
* Morpho raises $175M at a ~$2B valuation. Paradigm, a16z crypto, and Ribbit co-led the round to build an “open credit network.” $11B in deposits; Coinbase, Kraken, and Anchorage already run on it.
* Tether leads a $1.4B robotics round. Tether Investments led NEURA Robotics’ Series C alongside Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Amazon. Tether’s wallet kit gets embedded in the robots so machines can hold and spend money.
That’s all for now, folks.
– Marc & Team



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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️
“Blockchain doesn’t solve all problems. It solves some problems really, really well.”
JP Morgan has quietly moved $3T in cumulative notional value through its private blockchain, settles roughly $5B every day, and just became the largest global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to launch a tokenized money market fund on public Ethereum, MONY.
We sat with Dennis Cristallo, the person responsible for digital asset wealth management at JPMorgan to unpack the recent rebrand to Kinexys, why they are moving beyond private networks to public chains like Ethereum and Base, and the "Fundflow" pilot that just proved tokenization can move capital 38 times faster than the legacy system. This was more of a playbook than a podcast.
In this conversation, we break down why the $400T tokenization opportunity lives or dies not in the boardroom or the legislature, but in the UX of a wallet app.
About Dennis: Dennis Cristallo is the Head of Wealth Management Engagement for Kinexis Digital Assets at J.P. Morgan. He designs and scales blockchain tokenization solutions for the private bank and its global clients. Prior to joining the Kinexis team three and a half years ago, Dennis spent a decade building portfolios of hedge funds, private credit, and co-investments. He co-authored the seminal Bain & Company paper on the $400T tokenization opportunity and is a key driver behind JPM’s "Fundflow" and "MONY" (tokenized money market fund) initiatives.
Dennis joined the Kinexis team, then called Onyx, about three and a half years ago, coming from a decade of building hedge fund and private credit portfolios.
“We came up with the Onyx name. It sounded cool, it sounded mysterious. People didn’t really know what was going on.”
The rebrand to Kinexys: It was a signal that JPMorgan is moving from internal blockchain lab to commercial business unit.
Why this matters: Tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains crossed $32B in May 2026, roughly tripling year-over-year. The GENIUS Act became law in July 2025, formally distinguishing payment stablecoins from tokenized bank deposits and creating the first US regulatory lane for both. Since then, JP Morgan has deployed JPMD on Base, announced expansion to Canton, launched the MONY fund on Ethereum, and completed the first transaction on Kinexys Fund Flow with Citco. The conversation is now shifting from infrastructure to adoption and distribution.
🎧 Jump to the best parts
00:00 Introduction01:00 Why JP Morgan Started Building On Chain03:39 The $400 Trillion Tokenization Opportunity06:17 From Onyx To Kinexys07:45 Blockchain vs Crypto Inside JP Morgan09:35 Public vs Private Blockchains12:53 Kinexys Fundflow Explained17:31 Why Tokenization Matters18:42 JP Morgan's MONY Fund22:10 Deposit Tokens vs Stablecoins24:15 The Stablecoin Endgame25:33 Tokenized Private Markets28:47 What Is Actually Holding Tokenization Back28:59 Multi Chain Strategy31:09 Wealth Management In Five Years32:55 Lessons From Building Blockchain At JP Morgan33:50 Lightning Round
Important Links
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcristallo/
* Kinexys: https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/index
* MONY: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/about-us/media/press-releases/jp-morgan-asset-management-launches-its-first-tokenized-money-market-fund/
* Morgan Money: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/liq/resources/morgan-money/
Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts
Our biggest takeaways from this conversation:
1. Public chains are distribution networks, private chains are for operations
There is a constant debate about permissioned vs. permissionless blockchains. Dennis frames this not as a philosophical war, but as a product segmentation strategy.
“We look at them as distribution mechanisms. You have on Ethereum 60% of all stablecoins issued. You have a ton of users... we want to ultimately deploy tokens and assets where people are there to buy them.”
If the goal is to tap into crypto-native pools of capital, you deploy on Ethereum or Base (like JPM did with their “MONY” tokenized money market fund). But if a client wants to bring an asset on-chain strictly to eliminate back-office friction, without forcing their end-investors to manage crypto wallets, pay gas fees, or undergo redundant AML screening, the private permissioned network is the vastly superior choice.
Kinexys Digital Assets processes roughly $5B daily, primarily through an intraday repo application that allows wholesale lending with the borrowing leg and cash leg settling on the same infrastructure.
“If they borrow for an hour, they only pay an hour’s worth of interest, and there’s no overnight capital charge because it’s an intraday loan.”
The JPM team is explicit that private and public chains serve different purposes. It also established the pattern Dennis returns to throughout the conversation: tokenization earns its keep by solving a specific operational pain point precisely, not by being generically “on blockchain.”
Related reads:
🚀 Build credibility. Drive pipeline. Win in digital assets. We produce institutional-grade research that positions you as the authority in your category, then distribute it to 100,000+ decision-makers who act on what we publish. Let’s talk.
2. Blockchain is just a better database for broken plumbing
J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management and Citco completed the first live transaction using Kinexys Fund Flow in October 2025. [RELEASE]
The problem it solves is structural: in private equity and private credit, fund managers, fund administrators, and wealth management distributors run on incompatible systems with no common data standard. Capital calls are slow, manually intensive, and routinely underfunded.
“There’s no DTCC in the middle, there’s no standards around how data is shared, how capital calls are processed.”
Fund Flow addresses this in two stages:
* A discrepancy-surfacing data layer that doesn't require blockchain at all, just better-connected data management across the three parties.
* Tokenized settlement: when a capital call hits, cash moves from the investor's brokerage account, becomes tokenized, and settles against a fund token in near-real time.
“Honestly, you don’t need a blockchain for that. It’s helpful, but you don’t need a blockchain for that. You just need better data management.”
Result: Money moved from client accounts to the fund manager 38 times faster than the existing process, and labor associated with file processing, mapping and reconciliation dropped by approximately 93%. These numbers were verified by Citco, one of the largest fund administrators in the world.

3. MONY was launched on Ethereum for one reason

Hey, it’s Marc
For years, the stablecoin debate has been about who issues the token. This week made that debate obsolete. The companies that actually move money for a living stopped arguing about issuance and started building settlement infrastructure together. Three payment networks forming one platform. Four of the biggest U.S. banks building shared tokenized deposit rails. And 1.5 million contractors waking up to a stablecoin wallet they didn’t ask for, built on infrastructure they’ll never see.
We called this in our Money Movement 2.0 report and in “Stablecoin issuance is overrated.” The real race was never about who mints the coin. It’s about who owns the pipes. This week, we found out.
Here’s what moved:
* Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are forming a stablecoin platform
* Deel launches stablecoin accounts for 1.5M workers via Stripe
* JPMorgan, Citi, and big banks plan tokenized deposit network for 2027
* Goldman Sachs tokenizes real estate on GS DAP
* DTCC picks Stellar for tokenizing Russell 1000 equities and Treasuries
* Coinbase and Better fund first bitcoin-backed mortgage, Fannie Mae-approved
* CME goes 24/7 with crypto futures
🚀 Build credibility. Drive pipeline. Win in digital assets. We produce institutional-grade research that positions you as the authority in your category, then distribute it to 100,000+ decision-makers who act on what we publish.
Top Boardroom Reads
* Deposit Tokens: A Foundation for Stable Digital Money (JPMorgan)
* Stablecoins: Modernizing Financial Infrastructure (Morgan Stanley)
* Tokenized Finance (IMF)
* The Stable Door Opens: How Tokenized Cash Enables Next-Gen Payments (McKinsey)
* 2026 Institutional Digital Assets Survey (EY & Coinbase)
* Stablecoins: Framing the Debate (BIS)
The payment giants are forming a stablecoin supergroup
Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are close to launching a shared stablecoin platform. Coinbase is exploring whether to participate. Each company has been building stablecoin infrastructure independently for years. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion in late 2024. Mastercard acquired BVNK earlier this year and just expanded on-chain settlement to USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD, enabling intraday, weekend, and holiday settlement. Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement network to nine blockchains in April. Now they are converging on shared rails. [CoinDesk]
Why it matters: When three competitors stop competing on infrastructure and start pooling it, they are responding to a threat bigger than each other: fragmentation. Dozens of stablecoins on dozens of chains with no shared settlement standard. If this platform launches, it becomes the SWIFT replacement everyone has theorized about for years, except it will be owned by the companies that already process most of the world’s card transactions. We flagged this dynamic in our Money Movement 2.0 report: purpose-built payment infrastructure is displacing general-purpose blockchains for institutional settlement. This is the clearest proof yet.
Deel gives 1.5 million workers a stablecoin account
Deel, the global payroll platform used by 40,000 businesses and 1.5 million workers across 150+ countries, launched a stablecoin wallet built on Stripe’s full infrastructure stack. Bridge handles issuance via Open Issuance. Privy provides embedded wallets. Tempo handles settlement. The product is called DLUSD. Contractors receive dollar-denominated balances, can earn rewards on idle funds via Morpho, and spend anywhere via the Deel Card. Live today in Argentina, with LATAM, APAC, MENA, and Africa to follow. [Stripe] [Privy]
Why it matters: This is the first time Stripe’s full crypto stack (Bridge + Privy + Tempo) has been deployed at real scale. The use case is not speculative. In Argentina, 85% of contractors wanted to be paid in US dollars rather than Argentine pesos in 2025, according to Deel. In Turkey, a local salary can lose 20-40% of its value in a single year. The blockchain is invisible to the contractor. What they see is dollars landing in their account.
The banks are building “The Bridge”
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other major U.S. banks plan to launch a tokenized deposit network as early as H1 2027, operated by The Clearing House, a private-sector payments company owned by the consortium. Some banks call it “The Bridge.” Others call it “The Chain.” Clearing House CEO David Watson told the Wall Street Journal it marks a “big move for the banks,” adding that the industry faces a “radically different” future built around on-chain payments. Early users: large global companies seeking to streamline payments and treasury operations. [WSJ] [The Block]
Why it matters: This is the consortium phase. Individual bank efforts have matured: JPMorgan’s Kinexys has settled over $3 trillion in cumulative transactions. BNY launched its own tokenized deposit service in January. The Clearing House already processes $2 trillion per day in traditional payments. If tokenized deposits plug into that volume, it creates a bank-native alternative to stablecoins for corporate treasury. As we described in Issue 180: the payment networks are building stablecoin rails, the banks are building tokenized deposit rails. Both racing toward instant, 24/7 settlement. The question is not which wins. It is whether they interoperate.
Goldman Sachs tokenizes real estate
Goldman Sachs, Apex Group, and Archax launched a blockchain-native real estate fund this week. Fund shares are tokenized using GS DAP, Goldman’s own blockchain platform. LRC Group manages the underlying real estate assets. Archax serves as custodian and first distribution partner. Ownera facilitates connectivity between participants and distribution channels. The fund is structured under Luxembourg regulation. “Issuing blockchain-native fund units on GS DAP enables investment in real estate assets with precision while unlocking more seamless transferability in the future,” said Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs. [CoinDesk]
Why it matters: Real estate has been the white whale of tokenization: illiquidity, complex title structures, regulatory fragmentation. Goldman is solving the issuance and custody layer on infrastructure it controls (GS DAP), then using regulated distribution partners to build toward future transferability. The same week, Hamilton Lane launched HLSCOPE on Tron via Securitize, and Franklin Templeton brought BENJI to MoonPay. The tokenized fund distribution race is accelerating. Issuers are not waiting for one chain to win. They are going everywhere liquidity exists.

DTCC picks Stellar
What happened: On May 27, DTCC announced it will integrate DTC’s tokenization service with the Stellar blockchain, covering Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. This is the first public blockchain deployment of assets from DTC’s $114 trillion custody base. The initiative rests on an SEC No-Action Letter (December 2025) granting DTC a three-year pilot exemption. Limited production trades start July 2026, broader service launch in October 2026, with Stellar go-live targeted for H1 2027. DTCC is building a multi-chain stack: ComposerX for issuance and compliance, a Collateral AppChain on Hyperledger Besu with Chainlink, Canton Network for permissioned institutional rails, and now Stellar for public settlement. [PR Newswire]
Why it matters: Stellar hosts Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund ($1.98B AUM), an SEC-registered tokenized money market fund operating since 2021, plus native USDC issuance ($256M outstanding). That five-year compliance audit trail made Stellar the only public chain with proven regulated fund infrastructure at scale. Despite “public” deployment, DTCC maintains centralized control: root wallet authority to freeze, force-transfer, or burn tokens, whitelisted addresses, and off-chain legal record via Cede & Co. under UCC Article 8. This is not DeFi. This is the existing custody infrastructure extending onto a public chain while keeping every legal protection intact.
News Flashes
Infrastructure and Markets
* CME goes 24/7. CME Group launched round-the-clock crypto futures and options trading on CME Globex. Over the opening weekend, 7,200+ contracts traded, ~$50 million in notional volume. Bitcoin volatility contracts launched alongside.
* Galaxy launches OTC prediction markets. Galaxy now offers institutional OTC prediction market trading.
* Kaiko acquires Amberdata. Kaiko acquired Amberdata in a blockchain data consolidation push. Data infrastructure is consolidating fast.
Banking and Payments
* Visa and Brale explore private settlement. Visa announced a PoC with Brale for stablecoin settlement using SBC on the Canton Network. Privacy-enabled institutional payment flows.
* MoneyGram stablecoin on Stellar. MoneyGram launched MGUSD on Stellar. The remittance giant joins the digital dollar payments rush.
Funds, Deals and Others
* Ether.fi deploys $100M into Plume. Ether.fi allocated $100 million to a Plume RWA vault. Real-world asset yield inside DeFi lending.
* Franklin Templeton brings BENJI to MoonPay. The BENJI tokenized fund is now accessible via MoonPay. Tokenized fund distribution is becoming a competitive layer.
That’s all for now, folks.
– Marc & Team
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Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team
I’ve watched plenty of turf wars in this market. Never one like this.
Minnesota just made running a prediction market a felony. Punishable by five years in prison.
The same week, CFTC filed its proposed rule to govern prediction markets with the White House on Tuesday, and the same afternoon Donald Trump posted that the agency’s “exclusive authority over Prediction Markets” must be defended. Now, the Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the proposal.
All of this is happening a week after Minnesota became the first state to ban prediction markets outright (SF4760, effective August 1), with the CFTC suing within 24 hours to block enforcement. Meanwhile former CFTC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler told CNBC the agency may not even have authority under Dodd-Frank to regulate prediction markets, predicting the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. [Read more on prediction markets]
Here’s what else moved this week:
* DTCC picked Stellar for tokenising securities
* SoFi launches its first stablecoin
* Coinbase added six new currencies to its institutional product
* Bitwise just undercut 21Shares by 165 bps
* Mastercard just cleared NYDFS
* VanEck’s $61M treasury token got a DeFi lending venue
And 15+ more signals. Let’s jump in 👇🌆
🚨 SAVE YOUR SPOT: We’re running two live panels next week with BCG on what banks and asset managers should actually be doing about digital assets.
* Webinar 1: June 5, 10am EST, with Nadine Chakar (DTCC), Christian Schmid + Roy Choudhury (BCG). Inside the DTCC’s $100T tokenization buildout that goes live in October.
* Webinar 2: June 8, 12:30pm CET, with Kim Hochfeld (State Street), Christian Schmid + Roy Choudhury (BCG). What live tokenization actually looks like, from the team that just shipped SWEEP, a tokenized private liquidity fund.
30 min each, 10 min live Q&A.

Top Boardroom Reads
* Project Agorá: A shared programmable platform for wholesale cross-border payments (BIS)
* Stablecoin issuance is overrated, with Tony McLaughlin, Founder at Ubyx (51)
* Banking in tokenised economy (IBM)
* Beyond stablecoins: The emerging architecture of on-chain money (McKinsey)
* Accelerating AI Investment in Emerging Markets (IFC)
* Global Banking Annual Review 2026 (McKinsey)
Top Signals This Week
DTCC picked Stellar for tokenising securities
On May 27, 2026, DTCC announced that it will integrate DTC’s tokenization service with the Stellar network, with the initial scope covering Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. The integration supports the full asset lifecycle, including corporate actions and reporting, rather than a wrapper or representation. Tokenized assets retain the same investor protections, entitlements, and safeguards as traditionally held securities. [RELEASE]
Why it matters: The chain selection is a signal. Stellar offers compliance-first protocol, native token primitives, and predictably lower operating costs. And, it is the only public blockchain that has run an SEC-registered tokenized money market fund (BENJI) continuously for five years. WisdomTree and Amundi are also running their funds on Stellar. It is not avoiding Ethereum or EVM compatibility as the DTCC AppChain is built on Hyperledger Besu. Hyperledger Besu is handling settlement infrastructure. The DTCC’s AppChain is not issuing assets, it is moving them, matching them, and settling them between institutions. While, for tokenizing which includes asset creation, Stellar’s native token primitives do this cleanly, without smart contract risk and without unpredictable costs. Surprising for us that DTCC didn’t select Canton for this, given their partnership.
🚨 The Friday newsletter only scratches the surface. A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our PRO briefings.
SoFi becomes the first bank to offer a stablecoin on a public blockchain
On May 27, 2026, SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) made SoFiUSD available to retail members directly inside the SoFi app on Ethereum and Solana. The token is 1:1 redeemable for U.S. dollars from SoFi Bank, backed by liquid reserves on the bank’s balance sheet, and audited by an independent U.S.-licensed CPA. SoFi originally issued SoFiUSD in December 2025 to enterprise partners. Today’s announcement is the consumer rollout. [RELEASE]
Why it matters: Under the GENIUS Act, permitted payment stablecoin issuers cannot pay holders any form of interest or yield. Tokenized deposits sit outside that prohibition and qualify for FDIC insurance. Only a chartered bank can issue them and SoFi has the charter. In this process, SoFiUSD reserves remain at SoFi Bank. Also, SoFi has 14.7M banked customers and now it has become the first bank to offer a stablecoin on a public blockchain. The acquisition cost on each is zero.
Coinbase added six new currencies to its institutional product
Coinbase announced on 26 May that Standard Chartered will provide multi-currency banking rails for Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Exchange institutional clients. The integration adds new direct rails in Australian dollars, Singapore dollars, Canadian dollars and Swiss francs. Euros and pounds settle through G-SIB-backed infrastructure, Standard Chartered itself is a global systemically important bank designated by the Financial Stability Board. [RELEASE]
Why it matters: Coinbase’s Q1 2026 earnings showed institutional revenue of $136M, down 27% sequentially, with institutional trading volumes off 48% QoQ. The volume is drifting to competitors. Binance, Hidden Road, Kraken Prime and FalconX have spent two years building multi-jurisdictional prime brokerage with native multi-currency funding. A Tokyo hedge fund running BTC basis no longer has to convert JPY to USD to fund a Coinbase Prime account if it can use Hidden Road or Binance institutional in local currency. The Standard Chartered rails close that operational gap, retaining the users and capturing SEA markets.
Bitwise just undercut 21Shares by 165 bps
Bitwise Europe GmbH listed the Bitwise Canton ETP (BWCC) on Xetra today (ISIN: DE000A4ARTH9). The product tracks the Kaiko CANTO Reference Rate LDNLF index and holds CC tokens 1:1 in cold storage. Annual management fee is 0.85%. The ETP is BaFin-approved and domiciled in Germany, putting it inside the same regulatory wrapper as Bitwise’s BTCE, BTC1, and DA20 lineup.
Why it matters: Unlike traditional crypto networks, participants can keep transaction data private on Canton while still interacting with counterparties across the network. That combination of privacy and interoperability has become Canton’s key differentiator. Unlike Ethereum (fully transparent, front-running risk) or JPMorgan’s Kinexys (private but closed, no rival bank will trust JPMorgan’s rails), Canton uses configurable sub-transaction privacy. DTCC tokenized U.S. Treasuries on Canton, running a pilot with 26 participants across 21 nodes. Tradeweb and BNY Mellon scaled Canton to $10B/day in repo. HSBC completed a pilot simulating the issuance, transfer, and atomic settlement of its Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS) on Canton. HKEX’s Synapse platform facilitates post-trade workflows for cross-border Northbound Stock Connect trades on Digital Asset’s DAML smart contract language. These aren’t experiments. They’re attempts to rebuild the plumbing of capital markets.
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Mastercard just cleared NYDFS
NYDFS approved Mastercard Transaction Services (U.S.) LLC for a virtual currency business license under New York’s BitLicense framework on 27 May 2026. The license authorizes the unit to conduct virtual currency business activity in New York, including custody, transmission, exchange, and issuance. [RELEASE]
Why it matters: The BitLicense is the keystone, because in U.S. payments, regulatory legibility is the moat. The federal GENIUS Act implementation rules are due by 18 July 2026, less than two months from this license. NYDFS approval is the most likely template federal regulators will recognize as fit-for-purpose. Mastercard acquired BVNK, partnered with SoFi to integrate SoFiUSD (SoFi’s dollar-backed stablecoin) as a settlement currency across Mastercard’s global payments network and its MTN is connected to JPMorgan’s Kinexys. Hence, they are pushing multiple startegies to connect different ledgers in the blockchain space.
Related reads:
VanEck’s $61M treasury token got a DeFi lending venue
Securitize, the SEC-registered tokenization platform issuing VBILL ($61M total value), launched the fund live on a KPK-curated Euler vault on Thursday, May 28. Users can post VBILL as collateral, borrow other crypto assets, and run DeFi strategies while continuing to earn the underlying Treasury yield. The integration runs on Securitize’s DS Protocol, a compliance-aware framework that enforces transfer restrictions and investor eligibility checks onchain. Pricing data is supplied through RedStone oracles. VBILL launched in May 2025 across Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana with Wormhole bridging cross-chain liquidity. It charges a 0.20% management fee.
Why it matters: Securitize is not building a fund, it is building a distribution layer. VBILL is the demo unit that proves regulated tokenized treasuries can multi-home across Aave and Euler without a vendor-lock decision. Apollo (ACRED), Hamilton Lane (SCOPE), KKR, and BNY all run on the same rails.
Related reads:
Other Signals
Infrastructure and Markets
* Paxos Securities Settlement Company (PSSC) received formal clearing agency registration from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Link
* Samsung Securities, Samsung Card, and Samsung SDS are acquiring a combined 4% stake in Dunamu from Kakao for $407.7M. Link
* Aave Labs’ UK subsidiaries, Push Labs Ltd. and Push Virtual Assets Ltd., secured FCA registration as cryptoasset exchange providers. Link
* CME Group is extending trading for its regulated cryptocurrency futures and options to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, starting May 29. Link
Regulation and Policy
* On January 19 at Davos, Premier David Burt announced that Bermuda would become the first nation to put its entire economy onchain, with Circle providing the digital dollar plumbing, Coinbase wiring the onboarding rails, and Stellar issuing a sovereign-grade Bermuda Digital Dollar. Link
* The French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) issued a June 30 deadline for unlicensed crypto companies to secure MiCA permits or exit the market. Link
* Hong Kong’s FSTB and SFC finalized consultation conclusions to regulate digital asset advisory and discretionary management services. Link
Banking and Payments
* United Texas Bank secured OCC approval to convert to a nationally-chartered bank, gaining direct Federal Reserve access. Link
* Banca Sella became the first Italian bank authorized by the Bank of Italy to offer cryptocurrency services under the EU’s MiCA regulation. Link
* Block’s Cash App is rolling out a USDC stablecoin payment feature to its nearly 60M users, starting with 25% of the base and reaching full deployment by the end of the week. Link
* Nium has partnered with Circle to integrate its global payout infrastructure directly into the Circle Payments Network (CPN). Link
* Phantom launched its own USD-pegged stablecoin, CASH, utilizing Bridge’s Open Issuance platform and Stripe’s infrastructure. Link
Funds, Deals and others
* VanEck launched VBNB, the first U.S. spot BNB ETF, on the Nasdaq exchange. Link
* Grayscale filed an amended S-1 to launch the ‘Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF’ under the proposed Nasdaq ticker HYPG. Link
* Bitmine Immersion announced its corporate treasury now holds 5.39M ETH, representing roughly 4.47% of the total circulating Ethereum supply. Link
* Crypto prime broker FalconX has confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the SEC to pursue a U.S. IPO. Link
* MicroStrategy repurchased $1.5B in face value of its zero-coupon convertible senior notes due in 2029 for a discounted $1.38B. Link
Chart of the day
That’s all for now, folks.
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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️
“I’m not a fan of stablecoins being co-opted by the cards world. I’m not a fan of cards on the front end of stablecoins because then the stablecoin is just another account feeding the legacy beast. This is not the intended future.”
Tony McLaughlin spent two decades at Citigroup as managing director of emerging payments, where he authored the Regulated Liability Network whitepaper, the conceptual scaffolding the Fed prototyped in its RLN proof of concept and the BIS extended into Project Agora. He then founded Ubyx, where he raised $10M to build the the clearing system for tokenized money.
In this conversation, we unpack why the “Tether/Circle duopoly” is a temporary trend, why every bank on earth is about to become a wallet provider, and why the “general-purpose” technology of blockchains will inevitably subsume special-purpose rails like ACH and SWIFT.
“I disagree with anyone who believes there’s going to be an oligopoly in stablecoin issuance.”
About Tony: Tony McLaughlin spent 20+ years at Citigroup, most recently as Managing Director of Emerging Payments. Earlier in his career he worked on continuous linked settlement at ABN AMRO and travelers' checks at Barclays in 1993, three decades of building payment infrastructure across every form factor that has ever existed. In March 2025 he left Citi to found Ubyx, the first global clearing system for stablecoins and tokenized deposits, with backing from Galaxy, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, VanEck, Paxos, LayerZero, Monerium and as of January 2026, Barclays, in what was the British bank's first-ever direct stablecoin infrastructure investment. He also convened the Tokenized Cash Management Advisory Group, a 20-corporate body that published its core principles for digital money in April.
Why is it important: The total stablecoin float crossed $323B in May 2026. Barclays just took its first stablecoin equity position in Ubyx. JPMorgan moved JPMD onto Canton in January and is now processing $5B in daily transactions through Kinexys. Citi’s tokenized deposit volumes went from millions to billions in a year. Genius Act issuers are queuing up in the US. Europeans banks are racing with Qivalis. And the Bank of England's proposed £20,000 retail holding cap on systemic stablecoins.
Proof of Talk is known as the Davos of Web3, bringing together the core 2500 decision-makers in Web3, happening on the 2nd and 3rd of June at the Louvre Palace in Paris.
​Major speakers include Jenny Johnson (CEO, Franklin Templeton), Tom Lee (Chairman, Fundstrat), Stani Kulechov (Founder & CEO, Aave), Tom Zschach (CIO, Swift), Adam Back, Elliot Hentov (State Street, Chief Macro Policy Strategist) and more.
🎧 Jump to the best parts
* 00:00 Tony McLaughlin Introduction
* 01:29 Why Tony Left Citi
* 03:38 Why Stablecoin Monopolies Will Fail
* 07:16 Why Tony Built Ubyx
* 09:20 Why Stablecoins Could Collapse Payment Rails
* 13:19 Why Banks Need Stablecoin Deposits
* 17:27 The Real Stablecoin Business Model
* 22:14 Consortium Stablecoins and CBDCs
* 25:32 Building Ubyx
* 29:14 AI Agents and Stablecoin Payments
* 31:38 What Could Kill the Stablecoin Thesis
* 34:00 TThe BlackBerry Comparison
* 38:00 Corporate Adoption of Tokenized Money
* 42:58 Lightning Round
Proof of Talk is known as the Davos of Web3, bringing together the core 2500 decision-makers in Web3, happening on the 2nd and 3rd of June at the Louvre Palace in Paris. 51 Insights will be the official research partner.
👉 A few days to go: Grab your ticket now!
Important Links
* LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tony-mclaughlin-7b627a3
* X: https://x.com/stablemaximus
* Whitepaper: https://www.ubyx.xyz/whitepaper
* Website: https://ubyx.xyz/
Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts
Our biggest takeaways from this conversation:
1. The stablecoin duopoly is not the endgame
More than 82% of the stablecoin market sits with two issuers: Tether ($189B) and Circle ($76B). And, almost everyone is looking at them as the dominate players even in the future. Tony’s argument and it’s the most important reframe of the conversation, is that this is exactly what every adolescent payment network looks like before it pluralises. There was a point in time when there were only a few credit card issuers, all dollar-denominated, all US-based. Today, there are roughly 16,000 card issuers globally and the market shows no fragmentation. The acceptance layer absorbs all of them invisibly.
“Hundreds, and then thousands, of issuers. Hundreds of thousands, and then millions, of accepting points. I’ll be judged by that prediction over time.”
Tony's analogy to AOL and CompuServe is sharp: walled-garden pioneers always look unassailable until the open network arrives and the moat turns out to have been the entire business.
“America Online was the pre-internet portal to the information superhighway as we used to call it. There was something called CompuServe … All I'm saying is that what you observe at a point of time at the early stages of a market, if you extrapolate forward, you're probably making a mistake. And I think what's a far more likely outcome is that we will have eventually, and in the not too distant future, hundreds and then thousands … then millions of accepting points for tokenized money.
Why do we agree with him: Currently, Stablecoin accounts for 0.02% of global payments volumes. We are just at the start.
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2. General-purpose technology always subsumes special-purpose technology
Tony uses the “iPhone vs. Walkman” analogy to explain the future of payment rails. ACH, SWIFT, and Card Networks are special-purpose devices, they only do one thing (carry low-value messages, high-value messages, or authorizations).
“In the same way that we don’t have physical alarm clocks and calculators and Walkmans anymore, I think the business case to build a special-purpose payments rail... will become difficult to justify.”
Blockchains are general-purpose. They can represent a dollar, a stock, a piece of real estate, or a contract on the same infrastructure. Tony’s bet is that the cost-efficiency of general-purpose rails will eventually make special-purpose rails (like the current banking stack) obsolete.
Related reads:
3. Banks are running the wrong playbook (Issue vs. Accept)