🚨Coming Monday: BCG’s flagship report on the future of digital assets in banking. 68 pages, and probably the most important report on digital assets in banking this year. 51 got early access. Free download lands May 18. Reserve your copy below.
Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team,
There is a lot happening in the United States. The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, 15-9.
But the real signal wasn’t the vote. It was the joint statement from six bank trade associations (ABA, BPI, Consumer Bankers, the Forum, ICBA, and NBA) saying they support the bill and just want the stablecoin yield rules tightened. The banking lobby isn’t fighting crypto regulation anymore. They’re negotiating the terms. Plus:
Kevin Warsh is confirmed as the Fed Chair. He’s pro crypto.
The CFTC is federalizing prediction markets through litigation. On May 12, it filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in KalshiEx LLC v. Matthew T. Schuler, et al. (No. 26-3196). If the Sixth Circuit follows the Third, state gambling regulators lose authority over sports event contracts. [RELEASE]
These are our highlights this week:
Moody’s just rated AAA a tokenized fund
DTCC just rewired $25T of collateral
BlackRock files to squeeze stablecoin yield
Circle isn’t a stablecoin company anymore
Schwab opens crypto to 39M accounts at 75bps
Strategy ends ‘never sell’
And 15+ more signals. Let’s jump in 👇🌆
🚀 51 Insights and Proof of Talk are co-publishing the institutional digital assets report of 2026, launching at the Louvre, June 2 to 3.
Top Boardroom Reads
Why “DeFi is dead” and what replaces it with Sidney Powell, CEO of Maple Finance (51)
Collateral Infrastructure for Tokenized Capital Markets (DTCC)
The impact of stablecoins on the international monetary and financial system (BIS)
Stablecoins and the future of money: separating functions from instruments (ECB)
State of Stablecoin & Crypto Payments 2026 (WalletConnect)
🚨 COMING MONDAY
BCG: “The Future of Digital Assets” - The most important report on digital assets in banking this year. We got early access.
Key insights:
Tokenized real-world assets could hit $88T (16% of global investable assets) by 2035
Stablecoins could plateau around $9T (15% of M2) absent monetary regime change
The 7-page CEO summary covers the headlines. The full report covers Board, CRO, CTO, and ExCo views.
Free download. In partnership with BCG.
Top Signals This Week
Moody’s just rated an ERC-20
Moody’s gave a AAA-mf rating to an ERC-20 token. That’s the same grade it gives Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan’s money market funds.
The token is FILQ, a USD liquidity fund from Fidelity International, issued through Sygnum Bank’s Desygnate tokenization platform. It holds short-dated government securities, mirrors Fidelity’s Irish-domiciled $7B LVNAV money market fund, and starts with roughly $10M in on-chain AUM. It settles via smart contracts with 24/7 stablecoin-funded subscriptions. No CUSIPs, no transfer agents, no end-of-day NAV strikes. Restricted to non-US institutional investors. [Explore FILQ]
Why it matters:Moody’s is saying the blockchain wrapper doesn’t degrade sovereign debt quality. That’s the whole game. Capital allocators whose investment policies blocked “blockchain-native assets” can now point to a AAA-mf rating from the same agency that rates their existing Treasury MMFs. The institutional firewall just fell. And it sets the benchmark every other tokenized fund will be measured against.
🚨 The Friday newsletter only scratches the surface. A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our PRO briefings.
BlackRock files to squeeze stablecoin yield
The GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest to holders. BlackRock just filed two products designed to capture exactly that yield.
On 8 May 2026, BlackRock filed two post-effective amendments with the SEC.
Filing 1: BRSRV (BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle), a new fund holding cash, sub-93-day Treasuries, and overnight Treasury repos. Shares issued as “OnChain Shares“ through a permissioned system across multiple public blockchains. Securitize Transfer Agent LLC1 keeps the official ownership records. Off-chain identity systems link wallet addresses to verified investors. $3M minimum. The filing does not yet name the chains.
Filing 2: An on-chain share class for the existing $7B BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund. BNY Mellon Investment Servicing acts as transfer agent, recording shareholders on Ethereum using the ERC-20 token standard2. Off-chain KYC links wallets to investor records. This is the first time a public ETH share class has been bolted onto an existing BlackRock money-market product.
Both build on BUIDL, BlackRock’s first tokenized MMF launched in March 2024 with Securitize.
Why it matters: If stablecoin issuers can’t share yield with holders, the yield stays in the reserve pool. By law, that reserve pool has to sit in short-term Treasuries, repos, or 2a-7 money market funds. BRSRV is a 2a-7-aligned fund packaged for on-chain settlement — designed for institutional investors who want to move out of non-yield-bearing stablecoins into a regulated fund that pays daily yield. Context: Circle’s Reserve Fund (USDXX) manages ~$66B, with ~90% managed by BlackRock. BlackRock already runs the money. Now it’s offering the product that keeps the yield too.
DTCC just rewired $25T of collateral
On May 12, DTCC confirmed that its Collateral AppChain, first introduced at last year’s Great Collateral Experiment, is on track for production in Q4 2026. The platform is built as shared infrastructure: collateral providers, receivers, managers, triparty agents and custodians all work from one ledger rather than reconciling across systems that today run in silos. [RELEASE]
On May 13, 2026, they also released white paper with Finadium and modeled what happens when a single institution moves 25% of its book onto the platform: $1.9B in capital freed by year three, plus another $225M from capital relocation. [Whitepaper]
Be smart: DTCC is solving the two biggest bottlenecks in collateral management: the weekday-only settlement window and triparty silos. BNY, JPMorgan, Euroclear, and Clearstream each run separate triparty platforms today. The AppChain doesn’t replace them, it gives them a shared layer to settle and reconcile on. This is the plumbing upgrade global finance has needed, and DTCC is building it.
Why it matters: Right now, if a bank wants to move collateral from one triparty agent to another, say, from BNY to JPMorgan, it’s slow, expensive, and often manual. Each agent runs its own system, its own collateral pool, its own rules. Nothing talks to anything else. DTCC just said it’s fixing that.
Circle isn’t a stablecoin company anymore
Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) released Q1 2026 results before the bell on May 11, 2026. [Quarterly Report]
Total revenue and reserve income hit $694M, up 20% YoY. Adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to $151M.
But net income dropped 15% to $55M as operating expenses surged 76% (heavy post-IPO stock comp).
Circle also disclosed an ARC token presale (stablecoin-native L1) of 740M tokens at $0.30 each. The buyer consortium spans VC (a16z crypto, Haun, General Catalyst, IDG), TradFi (Apollo, BlackRock, Janus Henderson, Marshall Wace, SBI, Standard Chartered Ventures), and exchanges (ICE, Bullish). [ARC Whitepaper]
Circle also introduced the Agent Stack, Circle CLI, Agent Wallets, Agent Marketplace, and Nanopayments built on Circle Gateway, designed for machine-to-machine payments down to $0.000001.
Why it matters: Circle’s net income fell 15% even as revenue grew 20%. The squeeze is structural. Distribution, transaction, and other costs hit $407 million in Q1, up 17% YoY. Most of that is the Coinbase revenue share: Coinbase takes 100% of reserve income on USDC held on its platform and 50% of off-platform reserve income, per the 2023 amended agreement. As USDC balances on Coinbase have grown, Circle’s economics have compressed. Confirmed by Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas and CLO Paul Grewal during the Q1 2026 earnings call, the USDC distribution agreement between Coinbase and Circle automatically renews every three years. So, Circle is leaning towards Arc. If USDC lives natively on Circle’s own chain, with USDC as gas, Circle keeps the sequencer fees, the float, and the network economics. The ARC consortium is a who’s-who of distribution partners buying tokens before mainnet. Circle is turning itself from a stablecoin issuer into an infrastructure company.
🚨 Want more intelligence and understand what this means for your institution? Subscribe to PRO below:
Schwab opens crypto to 39M accounts at 75bps
On 13 May 2026, Charles Schwab announced the phased rollout of Schwab Crypto, opening spot bitcoin and ether trading to eligible US retail clients. Custody sits at Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, with Paxos providing sub-custody and trade execution. Clients open a separate Schwab Crypto account linked to their existing brokerage account, with BTC and ETH viewable alongside traditional holdings on Schwab.com, Schwab Mobile, and thinkorswim. The pricing, 75bps on dollar/ trade, sits below Fidelity (1% on ETPs) but 50% above Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade pilot, which launched at 50bps on 6 May 2026 with BTC, ETH, and SOL. [RELEASE]
Why it matters: Schwab’s “lowest in the industry” claim was outdated the day it launched. The 75bps fee benchmarks against Coinbase retail (tiered 0.5%+ depending on payment method) and Fidelity (1% on most crypto routes). Robinhood remains effectively free via spread-based PFOF. Morgan Stanley turned on the E*Trade spot crypto pilot at 50bps on 6 May 2026, one week before Schwab’s announcement. E*Trade has 8.6M accounts. [Morgan Stanley’s CEO note]
Strategy ends ‘never sell’
On the Q1 2026 earnings call (May 5) and a follow-up CNBC interview on May 8, Phong Le formalized what the market had begun to suspect: Saylor’s “never sell” doctrine is now governed by a math test. Le named two conditions. [NEWS]
Strategy will sell BTC when doing so is more accretive to Bitcoin-per-share than issuing equity to fund the company’s preferred-stock dividend obligations, specifically the Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred (STRC), which carries an 11.5% coupon.
Strategy will sell to harvest tax positions, either realizing deferred gains or capturing losses.
Le said the sell calculation activates when MSTR trades below book value or when mNAV drops below 1.22x.
Why it matters: Strategy has raised $8.5B through Stretch in 10 months ($2.07B in Q1, another $3.51B between April 1 and May 3) and faces roughly $1.5B in annual cash dividend obligations across its preferred stack. Saylor had earlier floated selling Bitcoin to cover dividends, which sent MSTR down ~4% intraday. The Bitcoin pile is the asset; the preferred dividends are the liability. Le is preparing the market for the moment the dividend stack can’t be paid by issuing more common equity.
Other Signals
Infrastructure and Markets
Franklin Templeton and Kraken parent Payward announced a strategic partnership to bring tokenized equities and yield products to blockchain networks. Link
Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs launched NUVA, an Ethereum-based marketplace designed to connect $19B of tokenized real-world assets to decentralized finance. Link
DTCC announced it will use Chainlink’s infrastructure and data standards for its upcoming blockchain-based Collateral AppChain. Link
Broadridge expanded its core tokenization engine to support equities, funds, alternative assets, and money market instruments on a single platform. Link
CME Group plans to launch cash-settled, Nasdaq-backed crypto index futures on June 8, pending regulatory review. Link
Regulation and Policy
The Bank of England confirmed it is treating stablecoins as a ‘new form of money’ on par with e-money and tokenized deposits. Link
Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Finance announced that a regulated domestic crypto asset market could launch as early as Q3 2026. Link
Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) launched an accelerated licensing and banking framework for crypto firms already regulated in major global hubs. Link
Banking and Payments
Anchorage Digital and major Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas partnered to process cross-border payments using federally regulated stablecoins. Link
Privy integrated its embedded wallet infrastructure with Stripe Terminal and the Tap to Pay SDK to enable in-person stablecoin payments. Link
Global forex and CFD broker Pepperstone has deployed Fireblocks’ digital asset infrastructure to manage custody, compliance, and DeFi execution. Link
Paybis secured both a MiCA crypto-asset service provider license and a PSD2 payment institution license from Latvia’s central bank. Link
Funds, Deals and others
JPMorgan filed its own competing tokenized money market fund (JLTXX) for stablecoin reserves. LINK
Japanese telecom giant KDDI is acquiring a 14.9% stake in Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coincheck Group for $65M. Link
21Shares launched the first U.S. spot Hyperliquid ETF (ticker THYP) on Nasdaq, offering exposure to the HYPE token. Link
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic raised $120M in a Series D funding round at a $670M valuation. Link
MARA sold 20,880 Bitcoin for approximately $1.5B in Q1 to repurchase convertible notes and fund infrastructure expansion. Link
Arkham published an on-chain map of Tron wallets tied to Iran’s central bank following their OFAC designation. Link
That’s all for now, folks.
PRO Readers: Read our alpha insights below!
– Marc & Team
