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
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)
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)
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
