By 
"In the medium term we aim to deliver a fully integrated, regulated ecosystem that supports the custody, tokenisation, and settlement of digital assets."
Hey, it's Marc.
Goldman Sachs, Citi and 19 other firms are reportedly building a dollar stablecoin.
Buy a stablecoin and the issuer puts your dollars in Treasury bills. It keeps the interest, about 4% a year. You get nothing.
Banks want that interest, as I wrote on Wednesday. If your company holds stablecoins, ask your bank what its coin will offer you.
Here's what matters this week:
Let's unpack.
On the podcast
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR and co-author of "Attention Is All You Need," the paper behind today's AI models. His line: "AI is the front end, blockchain is the back end." Soon every person and firm runs its own AI.
Follow the show on Spotify.
01 / STABLECOINS · PRO ANALYSIS
21 banks want to be Tether, not Circle
What's going on here?
Goldman Sachs, Citi, Santander, Deutsche Bank and 17 other banks and asset managers have reportedly committed about $270 million to Project Faro. Wells Fargo, Fidelity, MUFG and Standard Bank are also in. Faro will be a US company issuing a dollar stablecoin, targeted for the first half of 2027, with a euro coin next. The $270 million doesn't back the coin. It pays five years of running costs, about $54 million a year. Faro has no CEO and no final name yet.
What does this mean?
Every stablecoin earns interest on its reserves. Not every issuer keeps it. Circle earned $658 million from reserves last quarter and paid $412 million to partners and for transactions. Coinbase alone booked $307 million from USDC. Tether controls its own distribution and keeps the income: $1.5 billion of operating profit last quarter.
As I wrote on Wednesday, Faro is a bet that banks can be Tether, not Circle. They already own the customer, so nobody in the middle takes a cut. With T-bills near 4%, $54 million of costs needs about $1.4 billion of coins.
Why should I care?
If you hold USDC for treasury, ask your bank what Faro's coin would give you, since a bank with no middleman to pay can afford to offer more.
Related Pro story: Big banks talk down stablecoins on earnings calls, then co-own one
Your Take
What would make your treasury team switch from USDC to a bank coin like Faro? |
The 51 Signal: higher rates, fewer stablecoins
Dollar stablecoins in circulation fell $14.9 billion in the 30 days to November 12, to $289.0 billion. That's the biggest 30-day drop since mid-2022. Over the same months, the 3-month Treasury bill rose from 3.60% in May to 4.12%.
3-month Treasury bill yield on May 18 and November 10, 2026, and USD stablecoins in circulation on October 13 and November 12, 2026. Sources: DefiLlama; FRED. Exhibit and analysis by 51 Insights.
Here's the tension. A stablecoin pays its holder nothing. A T-bill pays 4%.
Our read: every rate rise makes parking cash in a stablecoin more expensive, which helps explain the outflow. The same rise pays the issuer more on every coin that stays. The winners will be issuers whose coins keep moving, in payments and settlement, because a coin in use isn't compared with a T-bill.
PS: Your next client could be reading this.
Get in front of institutional buyers, thanks to our 100k+ executive audience, including readers from J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, UBS, Stripe, and others.
02 / TOKENIZATION
DTCC goes to Solana, OKXICE picks a date
What's going on here?
DTCC's depository holds $114 trillion of securities. On October 28 it started letting firms turn some of them into tokens. On Thursday it said those tokens will reach Solana in the second half of 2027, after Canton and its own chain. A day earlier, OKXICE, the OKX and ICE venture, set November 23 for 24/7 trading in 70+ tokenized assets, including Coinbase, Circle and Robinhood shares and 59 Direxion ETFs.
What does this mean?
As I wrote on Thursday, a DTCC token isn't a copy of the stock or the Treasury. It is the security itself: same ID number, same rights, same official books. It moves between registered wallets, and DTCC decides which chains it reaches.
The use case is collateral. Treasuries move over Fedwire, the Fed's system, which closes at weekends, so a bank that needs cash on Saturday waits until Monday. A DTCC token can move on Saturday. DTCC estimates only 10% to 11% of the world's roughly $300 trillion in top-quality assets is used as collateral today.
OKXICE launches with companies that said yes, mostly crypto firms, after 67 said no.
Our read: DTCC's edge is the $114 trillion already in its custody, while OKXICE has to win its list company by company.
Why should I care?
If you take Treasuries as collateral, the asset you already accept will soon move on a public chain, so ask your custodian which wallets DTCC will allow.
03 / BANKING
Deutsche Bank's custody list is a strategy
What's going on here?
Deutsche Bank went live with digital asset custody for corporate and institutional clients in Europe on Wednesday. The bank holds the keys. On day one it supports five assets: bitcoin, ether, USDC, EURC and EURAU, per its product page. The same day it signed a memorandum with Deutsche Asset Management, which it mostly owns, to explore tokenized funds and stablecoins.
What does this mean?
As I wrote on Thursday, a bank custody list is a compliance list first. USDT, the largest stablecoin, isn't on it, because Tether has no EU license. EURAU is. It's issued by AllUnity, a venture of Deutsche Asset Management, Flow Traders and Galaxy, and has about €315,000 in circulation.
Connect the pieces. Deutsche co-owns a euro coin, sits in Faro, and now holds the keys. Issue, manage, custody, all in one group. Coinbase, BNY and Anchorage already hold crypto for institutions. What's new is a big European bank choosing which coins its clients can hold.
Why should I care?
If you run treasury in Europe, ask your bank which stablecoins it will hold, because that list decides which ones you can use.
04 / PAYMENTS
Airwallex's co-founder builds a chain, like Stripe and Circle
What's going on here?
Alta, a blockchain for banks and payment firms, raised $47.5 million led by Index Ventures, with GV joining, for $80 million in total. Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang co-founded it, and Airwallex is an early partner. Alta's first product targets cash that businesses park abroad ahead of payouts, which it puts at about $4 trillion: fund payouts just in time, and earn on the rest in tokenized funds.
What does this mean?
Stripe has Tempo. Circle's Arc went live with 100+ banks and payment firms building on it, including BNY, HSBC, Mastercard and Visa, and over $30 billion of USDC has moved on it so far. Wall Street firms use Canton. Each chain is anchored by a company that already has the customers.
As I wrote on Wednesday, the useful question isn't which chain has the best tech. It's which one your clients and counterparties already use. Banks earn the float on cash waiting to move. Airwallex wants its customers to keep it.
Why should I care?
If your bank earns money on clients' prefunded accounts abroad, Alta's first product is aimed squarely at that income.
Quick Hits
FinCEN drops the $250 rule. FinCEN and the Fed withdrew a 2020 plan to cut the record-keeping threshold for cross-border transfers from $3,000 to $250.
Visa settles in Western Union's coin. Anchorage stablecoins, starting with Western Union's USDPT, can now settle on VisaNet.
BUIDL gets weekend exits. Securitize and Ethena opened a $100 million facility to swap BlackRock's BUIDL for stablecoins outside market hours.
BNY adds staking. Figment will run validators for staking inside BNY's digital asset custody service.
SoFiUSD adds Polygon. SoFi's bank-issued stablecoin is now on Polygon, next to Ethereum and Solana, for 17 million members.
Bottomline pays in USDC. The corporate payments firm completed its first live cross-border USDC payments inside existing enterprise workflows.
The SEC joins the perps fight. The SEC stepped into the court case over CFTC-approved stock perpetuals. Coinbase, Kalshi and Kraken's parent back the CFTC.
The digital euro may slip. ECB board member Piero Cipollone warned that slow EU lawmaking could push back the planned 2029 rollout.
Thailand caps stablecoin flows. Thailand's SEC proposed daily caps of about $148,000 on stablecoin deposits and withdrawals at exchanges.
Europe wants token standards. The ECB, the Commission and ESMA invited firms to join a new European Tokenisation Standards Group.
Money Moves
Griffin, $20 million Series B. Octagon Partners led the round for the UK bank, valued above $100 million, as it moves into stablecoin payments.
KAST buys Gemini's European arm. Gemini sold its UK and EU operations to the stablecoin payments firm for under $10 million.
Securitize buys River One. The tokenization firm agreed to acquire River One to steer stablecoin capital into asset-backed lending.
Boardroom Reads
Meet Spiko, the largest tokenized fund in the world you've probably never heard about. Ian Allison, CoinDesk. A $2.39 billion euro money market fund that passed BlackRock's BUIDL with 10,000+ holders.
Will stablecoins survive once the banks catch up? Alessandro Hatami, CoinDesk. A former Lloyds digital COO argues that bank cooperation, not technology, decides whether bank tokens win.
The GENIUS Act's guarantees don't cover DeFi lending. Mike Hathaway and Joseph Quintilian, CoinDesk. A fully backed stablecoin won't protect a lender from a governance vote that rewrites the loan.
Global Banking Annual Review 2026. McKinsey. Ranks next-generation tokenization among banks' big bets, with about even odds of success.
On the Calendar
November 15: Solana Breakpoint opens in London.
November 18: Bullish reports Q3. The Singapore FinTech Festival opens.
November 23: OKXICE starts trading tokenized US securities, 24/7.
November 30: Comments close on the Fed's GENIUS Act proposal.
December 7: Abu Dhabi Finance Week opens.
December 9: The Fed announces its rate decision.
51 Intel: the data behind this newsletter
51 Intel tracks the companies, vendors and deals shaping digital assets, with Ask51, an AI analyst. It's open in beta.
That's all for now, folks.
– Marc & Team
Did you like this newsletter? |
