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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

"We think the space now moves to a growth phase where the underlying build-out is largely done and value really shifts to the applications that sit on top.”

That’s Richard Galvin, Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at Digital Asset Capital Management (DACM), describing the most compelling arbitrage in crypto right now.

Richard’s thesis is simple but profound: The era of investing only in "Blockchains" (Layer 1s) is ending. The era of "Applications" is beginning.

In our conversation, he breaks down a staggering statistic: Application revenue now represents nearly 70% of the entire crypto revenue pool, yet these apps account for only 7% of total market value.

“We’ve built the supply. Block space is now cheap, fast, and commoditized. We don’t need more blockchains; we need more users. The value is migrating from the ‘pipes’ to the ‘services’ and the market hasn't priced it in yet.”

About Richard: Richard Galvin is the Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Digital Asset Capital Management (DACM), a global investment firm specialising in digital assets and cryptocurrencies. He co-founded DACM in 2017 after a 20-year career in senior investment banking. His previous roles include serving as Head of Equity & Derivative Capital Markets (Australia) at JPMorgan and as Co-Head of TMT Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs JBWere.

As of late 2025, he also serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Bakkt Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BKKT), a digital asset services platform.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (02:09) → The Canary in the Coal Mine: Why crypto is the leading indicator for macro liquidity and what it’s telling us about the next 12 months.

* (05:49) → The Great Altcoin Devaluation: Why fundamentals (users, revenue) are up triple digits while token prices are down 70%—and why this is a “value investor’s dream.”

* (10:50) → The Dotcom Parallel: Why L1s (Solana, Ethereum) are the “Cisco” of this cycle, and why the “Amazon” of crypto is currently sitting in the application layer.

* (13:02) → The 70/7 Mispricing: Richard breaks down the math: 70% of industry revenue comes from apps, but they hold only 7% of the market cap.

* (18:37) → From Lending to Meme Coins: Why Richard is bullish on both the “serious” (Aave) and the “speculative” (Pump.fun) as drivers of mass adoption.

* (33:52) → The 2035 End State: Why your grandmother will use DeFi without ever knowing what a “private key” is.

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/richard-galvin-b336808

* X: https://x.com/richwgalvin

* Medium: https://medium.com/@richard.galvin

* DACM: https://www.dacm.io/

* AIMA: https://www.aima.org/

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* The 4-year cycle is dead (but the market hasn't caught up yet): Unlike previous boom-bust cycles where the same retail cohort chased returns, today's crypto is dominated by sophisticated institutions with fundamentally different investment behaviors. This should compress volatility and extend growth cycles.

* Why he's bearish on 2025 (but still bullish long-term): Crypto is currently weaker than most asset classes, driven by a drop in corporate treasury buying (which artificially propped up prices) and capitulation from investors front-running a non-existent cycle. This is actually healthy, it's removing speculation.

* The internet parallel everyone gets wrong: In the 1990s, people thought infrastructure companies would hold all the value. But infrastructure (Cisco, Nortel) became commoditized. Applications (Google, Amazon) captured the upside. Same thing is happening in crypto right now. We explore how.

* Why Solana applications are the most mispriced: Solana has the fastest growth, highest revenues, lowest transaction costs (~$0.00001), yet applications trade at discounts to other ecosystems. The market sees volatility and competition as downsides. Richard sees them as proof of health.

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

🙌 A note from 51: Start a research-driven growth campaign with us and reach 100k+ decision makers across digital assets and finance.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation & who to bet on:

1. The dot-com parallel (& the 10x mispricing)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“Capitalism is the superior system broadly. But when left unchecked, it has a lot of problems. And the reason communism and socialism have become more popular is because most people in the world are not participating in the capitalist system.”

That’s Yat Siu, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands, outlining what drives Animoca Brand’s investment thesis. Animoca has quietly built a $1.4 billion portfolio of over 600 companies. Their bet? That while Bitcoin is the reserve asset, the “Altcoin” economy, representing culture, gaming, and data, will ultimately be the larger asset class

In our conversation, he breaks down why Animoca Brands is looking to go public on the NASDAQ and why “digital property rights” are the only viable path to re-enfranchise the global population into the capitalist machine.

And here is his biggest take:

“No king willingly gives up their kingdom. Spotify won’t decentralize. Facebook won’t tokenize. It’s not innovation from incumbents, it’s creative destruction. A new company will disrupt them, and they’ll have to adapt or die.”

In this episode, we sit down with Yat to unpack the philosophy of digital property rights and the future of Animoca.

About Yat: Yat Siu is a Hong Kong-based technology entrepreneur, investor, and a leading advocate for Web3 and digital property rights. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in gamification and blockchain with a portfolio of over 600 companies.

He’s been investing in blockchain since the earliest days and is known for his philosophical approach to technology and economics. Before Animoca, he was an early investor in mobile gaming and founded multiple companies.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (00:52) → From Checkpoint Charlie to Web3: Yat Siu grew up crossing between East and West Berlin. He explains how seeing “scarcity vs. abundance” side-by-side shaped his belief that property rights are the foundation of freedom.

* (05:16) → The problem with modern capitalism: Why real estate, compound earnings, and the stock market have become impossible for most people and how QE destroyed the savings mechanism.

* (13:06) → John Locke’s labor theory in the digital age: Why your data and ideas are the new “apples you plucked” and why Big Tech is essentially enslaving creators.

* (30:59) → The Altcoin Thesis: Why Animoca views itself as a leveraged bet on the altcoin market, and why Yat believes the collective market cap of altcoins will eventually surpass Bitcoin’s “digital gold” status.

* (36:30) → From NFTs to digital identity to stablecoins: Why Animoca invests across every layer of tokenization.

* (44:47) → The vision for the next 5-10 years: Why tokenization will make everyone financially literate.

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/yatsiu

* X: https://x.com/ysiu

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ysiu/

* Animoca Brands: https://www.animocabrands.com/

* Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yat_Siu

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* Why capitalism is dying (and how to save it): The failure of antitrust, the rise of tech monopolies, and why data (the new oil) needs to be owned by the people who create it, not the platforms that exploit it.

* The NASDAQ Strategy: Why Animoca plans to go public to allow broad retail participation, contrasting with the closed nature of VC funds.

* Where to tokenize: Tokenizing liquid assets (like Treasuries) adds utility. Tokenizing illiquid assets (like real estate) doesn’t magically make them liquid, it just wraps the same problem in a token.

* Digital identity as the killer app: Why privacy ≠ anonymity, and why blockchain needs reputation (what Animoca is building) before it can scale trust.

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 A note from 51: Start a research-driven growth campaign with us and reach 100k+ decision makers across digital assets and finance.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation & who to bet on:

1. Altcoins will be larger than Bitcoin

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“The $400 trillion market is any asset that is recorded on an antiquated ledger... If we go to $2 trillion in the next five or 10 years, that would be a very good outcome for everybody.”

That’s Carlos Domingo, CEO and co-founder of tokenization pioneer Securitize.

And he clears up a big myth:

“Tokenization makes the asset easier to trade... But that doesn’t necessarily make it liquid unless the asset is liquid itself because the liquidity is intrinsic to the asset.”

In this episode, we sit down with Carlos to understand how tokenisation moves from a buzzword to reality.

Carlos explains why 2025 is an inflection point for tokenization. He breaks down why Securitize is going public via a SPAC at a ~$2B valuation , and why the “liquidity myth” of tokenizing real estate is a trap.

We also cover the critical shift from stablecoins to tokenized treasuries, the entry of BlackRock, and the inevitable future where your Tesla shares aren’t just entries in a DTCC database, but liquid collateral in your digital wallet

About Carlos: Carlos Domingo is the Co-founder and CEO of Securitize, one of the leading tokenization platforms. He founded the company in 2017 when the space was pure speculation. He has led Securitize to become the transfer agent of choice for giants like BlackRock and KKR. Before Securitize, he worked at Fortune 500 companies and was co-founder and managing partner at SPiCE Fund.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (00:25) → The $400T opportunity: Why tokenization isn’t a threat to traditional finance, it’s an upgrade to it. And why $2-10T in real tokenized assets over the next 10 years is the realistic target.

* (04:39) → Why Carlos started Securitize in 2017: The founding story, watching shares take weeks to transfer, getting inspired by ICOs, and realizing institutions needed the same efficiency.

* (08:57) → The BlackRock moment: Why the largest asset manager in the world launching a tokenized product wasn’t just a win for Securitize, it was the moment the entire industry’s eyes opened.

* (18:39) → The public vs. private blockchain war: Why private blockchains (like JP Morgan’s) will lose to open ecosystems, using the same logic that killed AOL and won the internet for everyone.

* (23:36) → Tokenizing public equities: Why shares trapped in DTCC databases need to be freed onto blockchains, and why the first big marquee company to do it unlocks everything.

* (31:15) → How to profit from tokenisation: Three buckets - infrastructure tokens, service providers like Securitize, and enterprise exposure. Why betting on all three matters, and why buying the asset is better than buying the company.

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosdomingo/

* X: https://x.com/carlosdomingo

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlosdomingo/

* Medium: https://medium.com/@carlosdomingo

* Securitize: https://securitize.io/

* BlackRock BUIDL Fund: https://securitize.io/buidl

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* The “big bang” moment for tokenized assets: Why 2025 might be the tipping point as BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Citi scale tokenized funds and treasuries.

* Why Stablecoins were the Trojan Horse: How the $300B stablecoin market proved the tech works, paving the way for yield-bearing instruments like Treasuries.

* The “infrastructure war”: Why banks are building private chains due to regulation, not utility, and why open innovation always wins.

* Tokenized equities: The roadmap to taking shares of companies like Tesla or Apple out of the centralized depository and into your digital wallet.

* The “service provider” alpha: Why investing in the picks and shovels (transfer agents, compliance layers) is the safest bet on the tokenization megatrend.

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 A note from 51: Start a research-driven growth campaign with us and reach 100k+ decision makers across digital assets and finance.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation & who to bet on:

1. Private blockchains are the “Intranets” of finance (and they will die)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“Zero is crazy because it means you’re just completely against the market... The starting point is about 2% of the size of the equity market and that should be the neutral starting point.”

That’s Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise Asset Management, on Bitcoin allocation. His point isn’t that one needs to be a crypto evangelist or a “laser-eyed” maximalist. It’s simply that in a world where Harvard is tripling its exposure and sovereign wealth funds are doubling down, having 0% exposure to digital assets is actually an active bet against the market.

In this episode, we sit down with Matt to make sense of the market’s recent swings.

Matt explains why the liquidity crunch and rate anxiety are temporary headwinds masking a massive structural shift: the transition from a programmed, halving-dependent cycle to a mature, macro-driven asset class.

We cover the “Bitcoin as a Service” valuation framework, why the old four-year cycle no longer explains the market, and why the smart money is quietly buying the haystack while retail tries to time the needle.

About Matt: Matt Hougan is the Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management, the world’s largest crypto index fund manager. He was an early voice advocating for Bitcoin ETFs, and before joining Bitwise, he served as the CEO of ETF.com. A three-time member of the “Barron’s 100 Most Influential People in Fund Management,” Matt is the bridge between Wall Street rigor and the digital asset frontier, with presence on financial news channels like CNBC and Bloomberg.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (00:37) → The Four Major Headwinds: Why the market is stalling right now (liquidity, election anxiety, and the ghosts of October 10th) and why 2026 is the real target

* (11:44) → Bitcoin is a SaaS Company: Matt’s brilliant framework for explaining Bitcoin’s value to traditional investors: It provides a service (wealth storage), but you buy the asset instead of paying a subscription.

* (22:14) → Is MicroStrategy A Ticking Time-Bomb?: Matt breaks down the math behind the “synthetic halving” and why corporate treasuries need to do more than just HODL.

* (26:30) → The “Do Hard Things” Thesis for DATs: Why ETFs have become the “risk-free rate” of crypto access, forcing companies like MicroStrategy and others to take on operational complexity to justify their premiums.

* (41:33) → Buy the Haystack: In a world of exploding stablecoins and L2s, picking winners is hard. Matt explains why a diversified approach, owning the equity, the infrastructure, and the tokens, is the only sane strategy.

* (46:36) → The Four 2026 Catalysts Bitwise Is WatchingLiquidity reversal (December 1st), Fed rate cuts, October 10th fears fading, and market structure progress. Matt’s specific roadmap for what needs to happen to hit new all-time highs—and why institutions are positioning now.

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-hougan/

* X: https://x.com/Matt_Hougan

* Bitwise memo: https://experts.bitwiseinvestments.com/cio-memos

* CFA Society NY: https://cfany.org/speaker-organizer/matt-hougan/

* Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthougan/

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* Why the “Four Year Cycle” is fundamentally dead, even if it’s psychologically alive.

* The rise of the “DeFi Mullet”: TradFi in the front, DeFi in the back.

* Why stablecoins are the US dollar pair for the future of tokenised markets.

* The valuation math behind a $1.3M Bitcoin price target by 2035.

* Why Bitwise launched an XRP ETF and a staking-native Solana ETF.

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 A note from 51: We arm financial institutions and digital asset leaders with bespoke research, thought leadership to shape the most important conversations, scale trust, and win business.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“Fiat needs to move 24/7. And that’s what blockchains are built for.”

That’s Sveinn Valfells, co-founder of Monerium, one of Europe’s oldest and largest stablecoin players – and one of the few people in Europe who’s not just talking about on-chain finance but actually building the regulatory-compliant rails to make it happen.

In this episode, we talk about how Sveinn helped write the stablecoin playbook that’s now shaping global policy. His company, Monerium, issued the first regulated stablecoin in Europe, long before Circle had a legal framework and before the U.S. even passed enabling legislation.

But this isn’t just another stablecoin episode.

It’s a front-row seat to the regulatory cold war unfolding between the U.S. and Europe and why Europe lost the first phase of this war.

About Sveinn: Sveinn Valfells is an Icelandic entrepreneur, scientist, and investor. With a background in tech and physics, Sveinn was an early adopter of Bitcoin, helping to organise the first Bitcoin conferences in London. He led Monerium in 2015 to become the first company licensed in the European Economic Area to issue e-money on-chain, including EURe, GBPe, and USDe stablecoins, enabling instant transfers between traditional bank accounts and blockchain wallets.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (00:37) → The future of Fiat is on-chain: Sveinn explains his core thesis: blockchains offer a superior infrastructure for transacting real-world assets, and fiat currency is the most significant of these.

* (07:23) → The e-money blueprint: How Monerium issued the first regulated stablecoin in Europe using the pre-MiCA e-money framework — years before Circle or Paxos had legal clarity.

* (17:11) → MiCA vs. the Genius Act: Sveinn compares the EU’s MiCA regime with the U.S. Payment Stablecoin Act — and explains why America is now copying Europe’s early blueprint.¨

* (23:47) → The “too big to fail” risk of dollar dominance: Why relying on USD for 99% of stablecoin volume is dangerous — and how multi-currency rails could mitigate systemic risk.

* (29:00) → Why Europe fell behind and how they’ll catch up: Despite clear regulation, Europe’s fragmented startup ecosystem slowed real adoption. Sveinn outlines what needs to change for Europe to lead.

Important Links

* Website: https://sveinn.valfells.com/

* X: https://x.com/sveinn_valfells

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sveinn-valfells

* Medium: https://medium.com/@valfells

* Monerium: https://monerium.com/board/

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* Why the future of fiat currency is on the blockchain

* How Monarium pioneered regulated stablecoins in Europe

* The critical differences and similarities between EU and US stablecoin regulation

* The systemic risks of global reliance on the US dollar and its infrastructure

* Why the Euro has the potential to become a major on-chain currency

* The future of financial services in a tokenised world

* Why a multi-chain, multi-currency stablecoin ecosystem is inevitable

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 A note from 51: We arm financial institutions and digital asset leaders with bespoke research, thought leadership to shape the most important conversations, scale trust, and win business.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“We’ve now got the single most powerful factor in all of investing that’s ever existed… Everything is tied to this debasement of currency.”

That’s Raoul Pal, CEO of Real Vision and one of the most respected macro thinkers in the world, explaining why the entire financial system has converged on a single trade: outrun the collapse of fiat.

In this episode, Raoul lays out a sweeping thesis: The world is caught in a massive sovereign debt spiral that can only be managed by persistent currency debasement. What looks like asset appreciation is really just denominator decay, the optical illusion of rising prices in a world of falling money.

“The S&P 500 isn’t going up. The dollar is going down. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.”

This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of the current financial system. This singular macro force makes investing in scarce, exponential assets like crypto not just an opportunity, but a necessity for capital preservation and growth.

We trace this macro supercycle from its origins in the global debt boom to its next chapter: tokenized networks, AI agents, and a replatforming of capital itself.

The game is no longer about picking assets based on traditional fundamentals; it’s about choosing the best vehicles to outrun the devaluation of fiat currency.

About Raoul: After forecasting the 2008 financial crisis and the 2012 European sovereign debt crisis, Raoul delved into the world of Bitcoin. He authored the first-ever institutional macro report on Bitcoin in 2013 and has since transitioned from a diversified macro investor to being almost entirely focused on digital assets. After a distinguished career that included managing hedge funds at Goldman Sachs, he retired from active fund management at 36 to launch the research service Global Macro Investor. He later co-founded Real Vision to democratise financial knowledge for all.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (04:22) → The Endgame of Currency Debasement and Debt: Raoul explains the inescapable math of sovereign debt, how the post-2008 debt spiral locked central banks into perpetual money printing, and why central bank liquidity is the “single most powerful factor in all of investing.”

* (07:46) → The $100 Trillion Destination: Why crypto is the single most powerful macro trade of all time, with a network adoption trend line pointing to a $100 trillion asset class within eight years. We are only 4% of the way there.

* (13:12) → Why Gold Preserves Wealth but Doesn’t Compound It

Raoul contrasts gold and crypto: gold protects against debasement, but crypto grows through exponential network effects. In a system where fiat is structurally melting, compounding > storing.

* (20:10) → Metcalfe’s Law, Not DCF: Why traditional valuation models fail for crypto. Raoul argues that blockchains are technology networks, not companies, and their value is driven by users and transaction volume, the same law that governs Google, Amazon, and Tesla.

* (31:37) → The Economic Singularity: Raoul’s long-term outlook. The debasement trade will continue until ~2032, forcing a mass migration to blockchain rails before AI and robotics fundamentally rewrite the rules of GDP growth.

* (33:37) → The Four-Year Cycle is Now Five: A provocative and data-backed argument for why the crypto cycle has elongated. It was never about the Bitcoin halving; it was about the global debt refinancing schedule.

* (44:29) → NFTs Are Humanity’s Contract Layer: Moving beyond digital art, Raoul explains why NFTs will become the largest part of crypto networks, underpinning everything from financial derivatives and brand loyalty to your digital identity.

Important Links

* Website: https://raoulpal.com/

* X: https://x.com/RaoulGMI

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raoul-pal-real-vision/

* Real Vision: https://www.realvision.com/contributor/raoul-pal

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* The endgame of currency debasement and debt

* The “biggest macro trade of all time”

* Why gold is a store of value but not a compounder of wealth

* Why the four-year crypto cycle is dead

* Why the current cycle’s slow, steady build-up may actually be a sign of deep structural strength

* Which L1s are going to win

* How NFTs will transform brand loyalty, social graphs, and the creator economy.

* Why AI and blockchain will be the solution to our debt spiral

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 Work with us: We create pioneering thought leadership that helps digital asset and technology companies lead the conversation, earn trust and win business.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

Hey, it’s Marc.

When JPMorgan tokenizes private equity, Circle launches a blockchain with 100+ Wall Street partners, and Mastercard drops $2 billion on a crypto infrastructure deal, the signal is clear: We’re in a race to own the rails of the next financial system.

Some are building them (JPM, BlackRock, Stripe, IBM, Circle), others are buying them. 2025 has quietly become the year of crypto M&A:

* Stripe → Privy

* Coinbase → Echo, Deribit

* Mastercard → ZeroHash

* Robinhood → Bitstamp

* Ripple → Hidden Road

* Circle → Hashnote

* Kraken → NinjaTrader

* MoonPay → Iron

It’s infrastructure, not tokens, stupid.

Also this week:

* Zelle ($1T+ in transfers, 2,100 banks), integrates stablecoins [more]

* First yen-pegged stablecoin went live

* Western Union plans to launch USDPT stablecoin on Solana.

We’ll unpack all of these highlights below 👇

🚨 We just opened new sponsorship slots for our newsletters & podcast. Want to reach 35k+ digital asset leaders? Contact us here.

Top Boardroom Reads

* Progressing fund tokenisation (FCA)

* Crypto-assets and decentralised finance (ESRB)

* MicroStrategy gets B-rating from S&P (51)

* Why Privacy Is Becoming the World’s Most Valuable Currency (Maja Vujinovic)

* 2024 BIS survey on central bank digital currencies and crypto (BIS)

* Stablecoins – Implications for EM (Standard Chartered)

* Ethereum’s Endgame: Why Credible Neutrality Beats Speed, with William Mougayar (51)

* The Stablecoin Balancing Act (IMF)

🙌 Work with us: We create pioneering thought leadership that helps digital asset and technology companies lead the conversation, earn trust and win business.

Top Signals This Week

J.P. Morgan makes private equity history on-chain

JPMorgan just made private equity history: tokenizing a private fund on its blockchain, Kinexys, giving private wealth clients direct digital ownership of fund shares. [NEWS]

The goal? To digitize one of finance’s most illiquid markets and make alternative assets trade like stocks, enabling real-time settlement, programmable compliance, and 24/7 liquidity.

Why it matters: Kinexys, JPM’s in-house blockchain, has already processed $1.5T in transactions and $2B+ daily volume. Unlike Goldman and BNY’s tokenized money market funds, JPM is tackling the hardest problem: tokenizing what never moves.

Our take: Private markets are a $23T asset class expected to hit $25T by 2030, and JPM now controls the first end-to-end infrastructure to move it on-chain. By 2026, Kinexys aims to support private credit, real estate, and infrastructure funds, effectively becoming the Stripe of private markets. The world’s largest bank just built the rails for the next $15T in alternative assets.

Zelle, Western Union upgrade infra with blockchain

Two of the world’s biggest money movers: Zelle ($1T+ in transfers, 2,100 banks) and Western Union (500K+ outlets, 200+ countries), are going stablecoin. Western Union plans to use stablecoins for cross-border payments and its own treasury operations, aiming to cut fees and reduce settlement times. Zelle, backed by major U.S. banks, will use stablecoins to enable international transfers and is even considering launching its own. [RELEASE]

So what? For years, PayPal, Wise, Tether and others dominated cross-border payments while banks watched from the sidelines. Now Zelle’s owners are building their own stablecoin rails and keeping those transaction fees in-house. Distribution is their moat: 100 MILLION (!) verified bank users will now get stablecoin rails without ever leaving their banking app (Zelle has over 74.8M active users, while Western Union serves over 150M customers worldwide, operating in 200+ countries).

Circle’s Arc: Wall Street’s New Blockchain?

Circle launches its blockchain Arc with 100+ institutional partners, including Visa, BlackRock , ICE , Goldman Sachs, HSBC , State Street , AWS, Deutsche Bank , Coinbase , Kraken, Anthropic , and 90+ others. [RELEASE]

The challenge: Big players want neutral rails. Centralized blockchains only work with massive distribution and industry coalitions (if ever). Because BlackRock won’t tokenize $10T on a chain run by one vendor. They’ll need credibly neutral rails.

Our take: The financial stack is being rebuilt. Quietly. Globally. But this time, the prize isn’t the token. It’s who controls the new pipes, that makes the money. Stripe, JPM, Citi, Blackrock, SWIFT – all of them, and soon more, want to build the rails. And with Arc, Circle just made its boldest move yet to do the same.

Japan’s first Stablecoin

The world’s first yen-pegged stablecoin just went live. With 10-year JGB yields at just 1.65%, JPYC’s thin-margin seigniorage model faces heightened stability risk, making yen-backed stablecoins structurally weaker than dollar-backed ones. [NEWS]

So what? USD-pegged stablecoins command over 99% of the global market, which crossed $300B in total capitalisation as of October 2025. JPYC’s stablecoin offers a “De-dollarisation Lite” path, creating a sovereign, regulated digital alternative to the USD for Asian trade settlement.

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Mastercard to acquire Zerohash for $2B

Mastercard is acquiring Zerohash, a crypto infrastructure company, for up to $2B. This mirrors Stripe’s $1.1B acquisition of Bridge in February. Zerohash enables Fiat-to-crypto conversions, stablecoin trading, API-level crypto integration and offers tokenisation infrastructure. [NEWS] [ANALYSIS]

The best part: Zerohash raised $104M at a $1B valuation in September 2025. Mastercard just offered to double that within a month. And they know why: the race is on. Stripe, PayPal, Visa, WorldPay and pretty much all major banks are all building on stablecoin rails.

So what? Mastercard is positioning itself at the center of the stablecoin economy. By acquiring Zerohash, it gains direct control over the infrastructure that connects traditional payment networks with digital assets: fiat conversion, custody, and tokenization. It’s a strategic move to future-proof its core business as payments shift from cards to blockchain rails.

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News Flash

* IBM launches Digital Asset Haven, infra for financial institutions & enterprises. Link

* Securitize to become a public company at $1.25B valuation. Link

* The European Central Bank plans to launch the digital euro by 2029.

* Ant Group applied to register crypto trademarks. Link

* Apollo partners with Coinbase to unlock stablecoin lending business. Link

* Canada advances stablecoin framework. Link

* Citi and Coinbase partner to streamline global digital asset payments. Link

* Visa added support for 4 new stablecoins across 4 chains. Link

That’s all for now, folks.

Take care

– Marc & Team

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Hey, it’s Marc.

J.P. Morgan just did what no major bank had dared: it will now lend against Bitcoin and Ethereum. That single decision pulls crypto into the global credit system. This is a small step for JPM, but a big step for crypto, particularly Ethereum (more below).

In the same week, Aave launched Horizon, letting institutions borrow stablecoins against tokenized Treasuries and funds on-chain.

Read that together: banks are accepting crypto as collateral while DeFi starts accepting bank-grade collateral.

The signal is clear: rails are converging. And again, everything except Bitcoin will be priced as infrastructure. The alpha isn’t any longer “up only”. It’s who owns issuance, distribution, collateral flows, and the spread as these rails sync.

Also this week:

* Coinbase goes full-stack with $357M Echo acquisition

* Trump pardons CZ, the Binance founder

* Polymarket confirms U.S. return & token airdrop

We’ll unpack all of these highlights below 👇

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Top Boardroom Reads

* Enterprise-grade private, permissioned L2s on Ethereum (zksync)

* State of crypto 2025 (a16z)

* Gold’s reign, Bitcoin’s rise. (Deutsche Bank)

* FGNexus Alpha Brief October (FGNX & 51)

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Top Signals This Week

J.P. Morgan Makes Bitcoin and Ethereum Bankable Collateral

JPM will let institutional clients pledge Bitcoin and Ethereum as loan collateral by year-end. Assets sit with third-party custodians (think Fidelity/BNY). It extends JPM’s existing acceptance of crypto ETFs as collateral into native tokens. [NEWS]

The goal? To bring crypto into traditional credit workflows.

So what? This makes BTC and ETH officially “bankable.” It places digital assets beside gold and Treasuries as recognized collateral. For Ethereum especially, this is validation of its role as financial infrastructure, a yield-bearing, settlement-ready asset inside the world’s biggest bank. This move formally integrates crypto into core banking workflows: balance sheet lending, repo, and margin facilities.

Aave’s launches DeFi’s first institutional credit market

Aave Labs unveiled Horizon, a permissioned on-chain lending market for institutions to borrow stablecoins against tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). Horizon launches with a consortium of top-tier partners: Circle, Superstate, Centrifuge, Chainlink, Ethena, OpenEden, Ripple, Securitize, VanEck, WisdomTree, KAIO, and Ant Digital Technologies. [RELEASE]

So what? Horizon is the missing bridge between tokenization and credit markets. RWAs are no longer passive, illiquid assets, they now serve as programmable collateral that can generate liquidity in real time. For investors, it means two things: new yield opportunities from institutional borrowers and DeFi’s transformation into a full-fledged wholesale funding market. This is the first DeFi-native credit desk built for Wall Street scale.

Coinbase goes full-stack

Coinbase acquired Echo for $375M , a fast-growing onchain capital formation platform enabling public and private token sales. Echo’s product Sonar allows compliant, self-hosted token launches with full onchain transparency. Since inception, Echo has facilitated 300+ deals, raising over $200M directly from communities. [RELEASE]

The big picture: This builds on Coinbase’s acquisition of Liquifi earlier this year, giving it end-to-end coverage of tokenized markets: creation (Liquifi), issuance (Echo), and trading (Base), all integrated with custody, compliance, and stablecoin rails.

So what? Coinbase now owns the full capital stack of crypto finance. It’s no longer just an exchange, it’s becoming the infrastructure provider for compliant tokenized fundraising. As soon as U.S. regulation will allow public token sales, Coinbase will be the default platform for issuers and investors alike. Think of it as building the NASDAQ, NYSE, and AngelList of the onchain era.

Polymarket token incoming

Polymarket’s CMO confirmed a POLY token and airdrop are coming, but only after the platform completes its CFTC-approved reentry into the U.S. market. The company is currently testing an invite-only U.S. app with event contracts tied to macro, politics, and culture. [NEWS]

So what? Backed by ICE’s $2B investment, Polymarket is evolving into the institutional layer for event-driven data, turning sentiment, probabilities, and information into tradeable assets. For investors, it’s an emerging market for alpha, a new data class that bridges prediction, liquidity, and macro hedging.

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News Flash

* Sony Bank has filed for a crypto banking charter to issue stablecoins. Link

* Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain raises $500 million Series A at a $5 billion valuation. Link

* Coinbase, Ripple & Gemini listed as donors for Trump’s $300 M White House ballroom. Link

* Hyperliquid Strategies Inc. files S-1 to raise $1 B and buy HYPE tokens. Link

* Revolut secures MiCA license, preps for EU crypto launch. Link

* Aave launches V4: liquidity hubs + spokes for capital efficiency. Link

* Google announces 13,000× quantum speed breakthrough. Link

* Fed Governor Waller: “Crypto is woven into the financial system.” Link

* Ripple-backed Evernorth files SPAC to create public XRP treasury. Link

That’s all for now, folks.

Take care

– Marc & Team

PS: Upgrade to Pro for our daily CEO Notes & market signals.

* Check out our AI newsletter, AI Operator, here.

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Hey, it’s Marc.

When gold outperforms Bitcoin, BlackRock starts building on-chain infrastructure, and JP Morgan invests $1.5T in U.S. infrastructure, something is cooking (we’ll unpack all of this below and in our CEO Notes).

“We need to be tokenising all assets, especially assets that have multiple levels of intermediaries.” — Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO

“Bitcoin is likely to become a reserve asset for central banks. Alongside gold, by around 2030.” – Deutsche Bank

The signal is clear: Smart money is moving from fiat dependence to real and digital (hard) assets. I highly recommend Maja Vujinovic ‘s read on this: Powell, JPMorgan, and the Quiet Pivot.

Oh, and before I forget: This week, crypto markets also experienced their largest-ever liquidation event, with over $19–20B in leveraged positions wiped out. And, DeFi held firm while centralised exchanges stumbled. [Read full story]

Also this week:

* Ant Group’s builds on Ethereum

* Citi to launch crypto custody in 2026

We’ll unpack all of these highlights below.

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Top Boardroom Reads

* Stablecoins beyond payments (Visa)

* Powell, JPMorgan, and the Quiet Pivot (Maja Vujinovic)

* Real World Assets: The Practitioner’s Guide (Rebank)

* Ethereum’s Endgame: Why Credible Neutrality Beats Speed, with William Mougayar (51)

* The Compelling Case for Crypto (Franklin Templeton)

* Stablecoins (KPMG)

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Top Signals This Week

Crypto's biggest liquidation ever

$19-20B in total liquidations occurred within 24 hours, affecting over 1.6M traders, triggered by President Donald Trump’s announcement of escalated tariffs against China. Here’s the breakdown.

* Long positions liquidated: $16.7-16.8B

* Traders affected: 1.6M+

* Single-hour liquidations: $7B (within one hour of Trump’s announcement)

* Open interest destroyed: $65B wiped out

Let’s do the math: Open interest in perpetual DEXs fell 50% ($25.7B → $13.7B) but recovered to $17B within days, with Hyperliquid leading the rebound.

So what? The event exposed how geopolitical shocks can trigger systemic fragility in 24/7 crypto markets, but it also showed how far DeFi has come. While Binance froze trading and mispriced stablecoins, decentralized protocols like Hyperliquid, Aave, Ethena, and Solana handled record liquidations, redemptions, and transactions without breaking.

That’s the real headline: in crypto’s biggest stress test to date, permissionless infrastructure outperformed the world’s largest regulated exchanges.

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BlackRock will tokenise everything

On Tuesday, the CEO of the world’s largest asset manager—$13.46 trillion in AUM—told Wall Street that BlackRock is building proprietary tokenisation technology to rebuild capital markets on-chain. [NEWS]

The goal? To onboard the next generation of investors.

“If we can tokenize an ETF, we can bring investors who start with crypto into traditional long-term products. Over the next decade, we’ll move away from traditional assets by repotting them in a digital form and keeping investors inside that ecosystem.” – Larry Fink

So what? BlackRock initially relied on specialised partners like Securitize for BUIDL’s issuance. Now it’s internalising the stack. The move signals BlackRock intends to weave tokenisation, issuance, and compliance directly into Aladdin, its flagship risk management and trading platform serving $13.4T in AUM. The shift from “owning assets” to owning the infrastructure of ownership has begun.

Ant Group builds on Ethereum

Ant Group, the owner of Alipay (1.4B users, $20T annual volume), launched Jovay Network, a high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 solution. [NEWS]

The goal? To turn the world’s largest fintech app into a global blockchain infrastructure provider.

What’s happening: Jovay is a high-performance Ethereum L2 targeting 100,000 TPS using a hybrid ZK + TEE design. It connects directly to AntChain, Ant’s private blockchain, which already manages $8.4B in tokenised energy assets — 15 million power devices including wind turbines and solar panels.

So what? Ant Group processes 1.5× Visa’s global volume and 15× PayPal’s. If even 1% of Alipay’s flows touch Jovay, it instantly becomes the largest on-chain payments network in history.

JP Morgan’s $1.5T bet

JPMorgan Chase just launched one of the largest private initiatives in U.S. history, a $1.5T, 10-year Security and Resiliency Initiative (SRI) to strengthen America’s economic backbone across defence, energy, and frontier technologies. [RELEASE]

So what? Most of the $1.5T plan fuels lending, underwriting, and advisory work for clients across critical sectors. But the real strategic edge lies in the $10B the bank will invest directly, buying stakes in cutting-edge manufacturing and frontier technologies. By tying its core business to national security priorities, JPMorgan isn’t just chasing profit; it’s locking in long-term relevance, influence, and political leverage in the next phase of U.S. industrial policy.

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Citi’s crypto custody

Citi just confirmed it’s launching crypto custody in 2026. They’ve been quietly building it for 2–3 years, writing code, lining up partners, getting regulatory clearance. They also invested in a stablecoin payment company, BVNK. [NEWS]

So what? Wall Street banks (State Street, JP Morgan, BNY Mellon and now Blackrock) are not just adopting stablecoins but have started building/ owning the infrastructure. The move comes after the SEC scrapped the SAB 121 rule in January, which previously forced banks to treat customer crypto as a liability, making custody economically unfeasible. Simply put, traditional banks are positioning themselves to fully capitalise on one of the biggest transformations in finance since electronic trading.

News Flash

* Stripe adds stablecoin payments for recurring subscriptions using USDC. Link

* New York launches city office for digital assets. Link

* Bhutan moves its national ID system from Polygon to Ethereum. Link

* CME launches CFTC-approved options trading for Solana and XRP. Link

* Morgan Stanley opens crypto fund access to all wealth clients. Link

* Cantor Fitzgerald considers acquiring Securitize in a SPAC deal. Link

* S&P Ratings brings real-time stablecoin risk data on-chain via Chainlink. Link

* US lawmaker moves to make Trump’s crypto 401(k) order law. Link

* French ODDO BHF launches Euro-backed stablecoin EUROD. Link

That’s all for now, folks.

Take care

– Marc & Team

PS: Upgrade to Pro for our daily CEO Notes & market signals.

* Check out our AI newsletter, AI Operator, here.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.51insights.xyz/subscribe

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“You cannot build a reputation based on what you are going to do. Trust must be earned over time. The track record matters.”

William Mougayar on why Ethereum’s 10-year record matters more than competitor speed claims.

William Mougayar, an early internet pioneer and one of the first to recognise the potential of Ethereum, has been in the technology business for nearly four decades. He met Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 and has had a front-row seat to the evolution of the blockchain industry ever since. He advised the Ethereum Foundation through its early growing pains, served as chairman of the Kin Foundation during Solana’s 35-cent days, and has spent four decades watching technology waves from Hewlett-Packard to peer-to-peer protocols.

His thesis: The general-purpose L1 wars are over. Ethereum won. What remains is specialization, consolidation, and the infrastructure layer maturing into a $700B capital base.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* (07:03) → The double-spend solution and programmable money: William traces blockchain’s lineage from 1990s Cybercash to Napster’s peer-to-peer revolution to Satoshi’s breakthrough, explaining why “if this, then that” logic with money attached changed everything.

* (17:05) → The first principles of blockchain: William argues that trust, decentralisation, and credible neutrality are far more critical than speed, explaining why institutions prioritise consistency and fairness over flashy performance metrics.

* (28:48) → Why Ethereum sacrificed L1 activity by design: The intentional shift to L2s wasn’t weakness—it was strategic expansion. “Ethereum is no longer just the L1. Ethereum is an ecosystem.” Why comparing Solana’s base layer to Ethereum’s base layer is intellectually dishonest.

* (34:40) → Debunking Solana’s narrative: DEX volumes, app revenue, L2 value extraction, capital turnover, and speed. William systematically dismantles each with data: Ethereum does 8.4B in DEX volume vs Solana’s 5B when L2s are included. Top 10 Ethereum apps revenue: $4B; Solana: $2B.

* (40:03) → A new valuation for blockchains: Why traditional metrics like P/E ratios and discounted cash flows fail to capture the value of public blockchain infrastructure, and why network effects and the flow of money are better indicators.

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We sat down with William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain and founder of the Ethereum Market Research Center, to cut through the noise and return to the first principles of what makes a blockchain valuable and enduring.

Why it’s important: As the Layer 1 landscape becomes increasingly competitive, narratives often diverge from fundamentals. With billions of dollars at stake, understanding the core tenets of decentralization, trust, and credible neutrality is crucial for investors, builders, instituions and enterprises. William provides a masterclass in separating hype from reality, drawing on his decades of experience in technology cycles.

Where to find

* X: @wmougayar

* Blog: https://wamougayar.xyz

* Research: https://ethmrc.com

🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:

* Pre-Bitcoin digital cash and peer-to-peer technologies

* What made Ethereum’s smart contracts a revolutionary leap forward

* Why the “Layer 1” label is a misleading oversimplification for Ethereum

* The critical importance of credible neutrality and censorship resistance

* A detailed rebuttal of common anti-Ethereum arguments, particularly regarding Solana

* The flaws in using “revenue” as the primary metric for valuing a blockchain

* How value accrues to ETH through its role as a productive, foundational asset

* The evolution of valuation models from the early internet to today’s blockchain ecosystems

* What’s next for blockchain adoption, from institutional finance to consumer apps

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

Recommended reports:

🙌 Work with us: We create pioneering thought leadership that helps digital asset and technology companies lead the conversation, earn trust and win business.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The “general-purpose blockchain” game is over