Hey, it’s Marc.
Big week for crypto, at least in the US.
In today’s issue:
Trump hosts crypto’s CEOs as bitcoin rips 21%,
the SEC proposes its first crypto rulebook,
Citi moves bitcoin custody next to the bonds,
and Swift’s ledger carries its first live bank money.
One theme runs through all of it: Washington stopped promising this week and started shipping. The market paid up front.
Let’s get into it.
📚 Boardroom Reads
Regulation Crypto Assets, proposed rule (SEC). The primary text: $5M over four years for startups, $75M a year for reporting issuers.
GENIUS Act stablecoin rules (US Treasury). Knowingly taking part in unlawful stablecoin issuance: up to $1M per violation and five years in prison.
Q2 2026 Signals Report (Fidelity Digital Assets). Network activity now splits from price on Ethereum and Solana.
2026 Stablecoin Momentum Report (Zero Hash). Active stablecoin users up 146% in a year; volumes up 690%, per its platform data.
2026 Institutional Investor Survey (Coinbase and EY-Parthenon). 351 institutions polled; money is moving to regulated products and tighter governance.
Quick plug, then back to the news.
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Trump Turns the White House Into a Trading Floor
Buy the room.
Trump hosted crypto and exchange CEOs at the White House on Wednesday and told Congress to pass a “fair version” of the Clarity Act. Bitcoin ended the week near $77K, up about 20%.
What’s happening: The rally started hours earlier, at the Treasury. On Wednesday morning the department said it will at least double its long-end bond buybacks, from a $2B cap to $4B or more per operation, one day after the 30-year yield hit 5.34%, its highest since 2007.
Bitcoin jumped from about $64K to $69,749 in under 12 hours, then past $72K on Thursday. Roughly $3B in crypto shorts were liquidated across the market, the biggest squeeze of 2026.
Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $517M on Wednesday, their largest day since early May, then $606M Thursday, per Farside. Ether ETFs added $220M Thursday, their strongest day since October.
Strategy rose 12%, Coinbase 9%. Ether jumped 10%.
In the room: Armstrong, Garlinghouse, Tenev, the Winklevoss twins, Nasdaq’s Friedman, ICE’s Sprecher. Also in the room: SEC Chair Atkins and CFTC Chair Selig.
Why it matters: The marginal bitcoin buyer now reads the Treasury calendar, and Washington runs the liquidity desk.
Between the lines: The bigger buybacks are temporary: they run September 9 through November 4, and Treasury has yet to publish the final schedule. One Point’s Peter Boockvar: “This is NOT a debt paydown.” Meanwhile the Clarity Act is still stuck on ethics language about officials profiting from digital assets.
Punchline: A two-line Treasury notice moved bitcoin more than any halving narrative this year.
The SEC Writes Crypto Its Own Rulebook
Minimum effective dose.
The SEC proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets” on Tuesday. It is the agency’s first rulebook written just for crypto, and it landed four days after the SEC cancelled the meeting where it was meant to vote.
The details:
Two ways to raise money without registering: up to $5M over four years for startups, and up to $75M every 12 months for issuers that publish financials and keep reporting.
A safe harbor lets a token break free of its original investment contract. After that, the token itself is no longer a security. Chair Atkins called the package a “minimum effective dose” and credited Hester Peirce’s 2020 idea.
Qualifying offerings would be exempt from state registration rules; state antifraud powers stay. Comments run 60 days from the August 21 Federal Register notice.
Same week: Treasury proposed its GENIUS Act rules on who may issue and sell stablecoins in the US, with comments due October 19. And Comptroller Gould promised final OCC GENIUS rules by November.
Why it matters: Last week we wrote that the agencies move on a faster clock than Congress. This week they lapped it. The SEC, Treasury, OCC, and CFTC all have live crypto rules in motion while the Clarity Act waits for its September 15 vote. If the $75M exemption survives, one big reason to launch a token offshore goes away.
Useful shorthand for meetings: the SEC covers token sales. Treasury and the OCC cover stablecoins. Only the Clarity Act decides who polices trading.
Looking ahead: September 15 is a cloture vote on the motion to proceed. Even with every Republican on board, it needs at least seven Democrats. Watch the ethics fight, then the count.
Citi Puts Bitcoin Next to the Bonds
One vault.
Citi confirmed it will hold bitcoin for institutional clients later this year. The service sits inside Custody+, its new custody platform.
What’s happening: The service starts with bitcoin and runs on Citi’s own digital-asset stack. It has been in the works for close to three years. No exact date yet, and no other assets named.
Custody+ serves clients in 100+ markets, 62 of them on Citi’s own network. Citi says it spends over $2B a year on the platform.
More banks are lining up. Morgan Stanley applied for a trust charter for crypto custody in February. NYSE is building a tokenized stock platform with Citi and BNY.
The unlock was regulatory. Once the SEC scrapped SAB 121, banks no longer had to carry client crypto on their own balance sheets.
Why it matters: Custody was the moat for crypto-native firms. That moat is closing. When the bank that holds your bonds can hold your bitcoin too, the extra custodian relationship goes away. So does one of the last excuses for a zero allocation.
Punchline: Coinbase Custody’s biggest competitor used to be self-custody. Now it’s the client’s existing bank.
Two Banks Put Real Money on Swift’s Ledger
Old pipes, new rails.
Standard Chartered and HSBC executed the first live cross-border transaction on Swift’s blockchain ledger on Wednesday. The system went live only six weeks ago.
What’s happening: The two banks swapped payment messages over Swift’s ledger. Each bank booked the result as tokenized deposits on its own system. The ledger matched and netted the obligations. The money then settled through the normal channels.
The ledger is EVM-compatible and built on Hyperledger Besu. Swift runs the shared workflow. Each bank keeps its own records.
17 banks across six continents are in the pilot, including BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, MUFG, UBS, and Wells Fargo.
HSBC’s Lewis Sun: bank-issued digital money can be “interoperable across banks... while maintaining the integrity and regulatory oversight of the existing financial ecosystem.”
Why it matters: Swift doesn’t need to win the design debate on tokenized deposits. It needs every bank’s version to talk to the others. That’s the same trick it pulled on payment messages 50 years ago. And for bank plumbing, first live use six weeks after launch is fast.
Between the lines: No amount, currency, or corridor was disclosed. Final settlement stayed on the old rails. The ledger carried the workflow; the money moved the old way. That is the point of the design, and its current ceiling.
Looking ahead: The insurgent version arrived a day earlier. N3XT, the new Wyoming-chartered bank from Signature Bank’s founders, won approval on Tuesday to let its USD deposit tokens move beyond its own walls: to non-customers and foreign counterparties, 24/7. Swift orchestrates the old rails; N3XT skips them. If more bank pairs go live on Swift’s ledger by year-end, the incumbents’ version wins. If they don’t, watch Wyoming.
Related: SWIFT builds blockchain with 30+ banks
⚡ Quick Hits
Tether completed its first full financial audit: KPMG issued an unqualified opinion and confirmed a $6.8B reserve surplus as of December 2025.
World Liberty Financial won preliminary conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank to issue USD1, the Trump family’s ~$4B stablecoin, under federal supervision.
Trump said the CFTC is working to bring Hyperliquid onshore “in a fully compliant fashion”; HYPE jumped 20%.
Bank Leumi tapped Galaxy to offer crypto trading, the first of Israel’s major banks to do so.
Securitize launched a tokenized high-yield bond fund subadvised by Neuberger Berman, the $230B fixed-income platform’s first tokenized mandate, across four chains.
Injective’s institutional affiliate registered with the SEC as a transfer agent for tokenized-securities recordkeeping.
The CFTC asked for comment on listing AI compute derivatives, with CME eyeing an October launch.
Coinbase added 50x crypto perps to its Base app, routed through Hyperliquid.
Kalshi filed with the CFTC to list copper perpetual futures, pushing its perps business beyond crypto into metals.
Deel partnered with Mesh to run stablecoin payouts for its global workforce clients.
💰 Money Moves
Metaplanet is investing 2,100 BTC plus cash, about $134.6M, to take ~96% of Nasdaq-listed Super League. The firm becomes “Superplanet,” its US bitcoin treasury arm. SLE closed up ~50%.
Ripple Prime raised $275M in its first senior notes, rated BBB by KBRA, to expand US clearing and prime brokerage.
FalconX and Ethena launched a $1B warehouse financing facility that will put USDe backing assets to work in overcollateralized institutional credit.
HIVE’s BUZZ HPC signed a five-year AI cloud deal worth about $350M with an unnamed investment-grade customer. It projects ~$70M a year in revenue once 2,016 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs come online in Q4.
Bitcoin balance sheets keep turning into operating businesses. Treasuries buy listings, miners sell compute, stablecoin collateral earns a spread.
📅 On the Calendar
Aug 26: Nvidia earnings
Aug 27-29: Jackson Hole, this year themed on payments
Sep 9: Treasury’s bigger $4B buybacks start
Sep 11: August CPI
Sep 15: The Senate’s 60-vote test on the Clarity Act
Sep 15-16: Fed rate decision; futures lean toward a hold
Sep 16: Circle’s Arc mainnet goes live
Oct 19: Comments close on Treasury’s stablecoin rule
That’s all for now, folks.
– Marc & Team
