51 Insights – What's next in digital asset, AI and business.

Marc Baumann

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  1. 2d ago

    182: AI agents just got a credit card

    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 * Digital Assets: A strategic playbook for banks (BCG) * 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) * Inside JP Morgan’s $3T tokenization machine, with Dennis Cristallo, Head of Wealth Management at Kinexys, JPMorgan (51) * 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) * Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers (BCG) 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

    11 min
  2. Inside JP Morgan's $3T tokenization machine, with Dennis Cristallo, Head of Wealth Management at Kinexys, JPMorgan

    Jun 8

    Inside JP Morgan's $3T tokenization machine, with Dennis Cristallo, Head of Wealth Management at Kinexys, JPMorgan

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️ “Blockchain doesn’t solve all problems. It solves some problems really, really well.” JP Morgan has quietly moved $3T in cumulative notional value through its private blockchain, settles roughly $5B every day, and just became the largest global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to launch a tokenized money market fund on public Ethereum, MONY. We sat with Dennis Cristallo, the person responsible for digital asset wealth management at JPMorgan to unpack the recent rebrand to Kinexys, why they are moving beyond private networks to public chains like Ethereum and Base, and the "Fundflow" pilot that just proved tokenization can move capital 38 times faster than the legacy system. This was more of a playbook than a podcast. In this conversation, we break down why the $400T tokenization opportunity lives or dies not in the boardroom or the legislature, but in the UX of a wallet app. About Dennis: Dennis Cristallo is the Head of Wealth Management Engagement for Kinexis Digital Assets at J.P. Morgan. He designs and scales blockchain tokenization solutions for the private bank and its global clients. Prior to joining the Kinexis team three and a half years ago, Dennis spent a decade building portfolios of hedge funds, private credit, and co-investments. He co-authored the seminal Bain & Company paper on the $400T tokenization opportunity and is a key driver behind JPM’s "Fundflow" and "MONY" (tokenized money market fund) initiatives. Dennis joined the Kinexis team, then called Onyx, about three and a half years ago, coming from a decade of building hedge fund and private credit portfolios. “We came up with the Onyx name. It sounded cool, it sounded mysterious. People didn’t really know what was going on.” The rebrand to Kinexys: It was a signal that JPMorgan is moving from internal blockchain lab to commercial business unit. Why this matters: Tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains crossed $32B in May 2026, roughly tripling year-over-year. The GENIUS Act became law in July 2025, formally distinguishing payment stablecoins from tokenized bank deposits and creating the first US regulatory lane for both. Since then, JP Morgan has deployed JPMD on Base, announced expansion to Canton, launched the MONY fund on Ethereum, and completed the first transaction on Kinexys Fund Flow with Citco. The conversation is now shifting from infrastructure to adoption and distribution. 🎧 Jump to the best parts 00:00 Introduction01:00 Why JP Morgan Started Building On Chain03:39 The $400 Trillion Tokenization Opportunity06:17 From Onyx To Kinexys07:45 Blockchain vs Crypto Inside JP Morgan09:35 Public vs Private Blockchains12:53 Kinexys Fundflow Explained17:31 Why Tokenization Matters18:42 JP Morgan's MONY Fund22:10 Deposit Tokens vs Stablecoins24:15 The Stablecoin Endgame25:33 Tokenized Private Markets28:47 What Is Actually Holding Tokenization Back28:59 Multi Chain Strategy31:09 Wealth Management In Five Years32:55 Lessons From Building Blockchain At JP Morgan33:50 Lightning Round Important Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcristallo/ * Kinexys: https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/index * MONY: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/about-us/media/press-releases/jp-morgan-asset-management-launches-its-first-tokenized-money-market-fund/ * Morgan Money: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/liq/resources/morgan-money/ Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts Our biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. Public chains are distribution networks, private chains are for operations There is a constant debate about permissioned vs. permissionless blockchains. Dennis frames this not as a philosophical war, but as a product segmentation strategy. “We look at them as distribution mechanisms. You have on Ethereum 60% of all stablecoins issued. You have a ton of users... we want to ultimately deploy tokens and assets where people are there to buy them.” If the goal is to tap into crypto-native pools of capital, you deploy on Ethereum or Base (like JPM did with their “MONY” tokenized money market fund). But if a client wants to bring an asset on-chain strictly to eliminate back-office friction, without forcing their end-investors to manage crypto wallets, pay gas fees, or undergo redundant AML screening, the private permissioned network is the vastly superior choice. Kinexys Digital Assets processes roughly $5B daily, primarily through an intraday repo application that allows wholesale lending with the borrowing leg and cash leg settling on the same infrastructure. “If they borrow for an hour, they only pay an hour’s worth of interest, and there’s no overnight capital charge because it’s an intraday loan.” The JPM team is explicit that private and public chains serve different purposes. It also established the pattern Dennis returns to throughout the conversation: tokenization earns its keep by solving a specific operational pain point precisely, not by being generically “on blockchain.” Related reads: 🚀 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. Let’s talk. 2. Blockchain is just a better database for broken plumbing J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management and Citco completed the first live transaction using Kinexys Fund Flow in October 2025. [RELEASE] The problem it solves is structural: in private equity and private credit, fund managers, fund administrators, and wealth management distributors run on incompatible systems with no common data standard. Capital calls are slow, manually intensive, and routinely underfunded. “There’s no DTCC in the middle, there’s no standards around how data is shared, how capital calls are processed.” Fund Flow addresses this in two stages: * A discrepancy-surfacing data layer that doesn't require blockchain at all, just better-connected data management across the three parties. * Tokenized settlement: when a capital call hits, cash moves from the investor's brokerage account, becomes tokenized, and settles against a fund token in near-real time. “Honestly, you don’t need a blockchain for that. It’s helpful, but you don’t need a blockchain for that. You just need better data management.” Result: Money moved from client accounts to the fund manager 38 times faster than the existing process, and labor associated with file processing, mapping and reconciliation dropped by approximately 93%. These numbers were verified by Citco, one of the largest fund administrators in the world. 3. MONY was launched on Ethereum for one reason

    36 min

  3. Jun 5

    181: JPMorgan, Citi, big banks go all-in on tokenzied deposits

    Hey, it’s Marc For years, the stablecoin debate has been about who issues the token. This week made that debate obsolete. The companies that actually move money for a living stopped arguing about issuance and started building settlement infrastructure together. Three payment networks forming one platform. Four of the biggest U.S. banks building shared tokenized deposit rails. And 1.5 million contractors waking up to a stablecoin wallet they didn’t ask for, built on infrastructure they’ll never see. We called this in our Money Movement 2.0 report and in “Stablecoin issuance is overrated.” The real race was never about who mints the coin. It’s about who owns the pipes. This week, we found out. Here’s what moved: * Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are forming a stablecoin platform * Deel launches stablecoin accounts for 1.5M workers via Stripe * JPMorgan, Citi, and big banks plan tokenized deposit network for 2027 * Goldman Sachs tokenizes real estate on GS DAP * DTCC picks Stellar for tokenizing Russell 1000 equities and Treasuries * Coinbase and Better fund first bitcoin-backed mortgage, Fannie Mae-approved * CME goes 24/7 with crypto futures 🚀 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. Top Boardroom Reads * Deposit Tokens: A Foundation for Stable Digital Money (JPMorgan) * Stablecoins: Modernizing Financial Infrastructure (Morgan Stanley) * Tokenized Finance (IMF) * The Stable Door Opens: How Tokenized Cash Enables Next-Gen Payments (McKinsey) * 2026 Institutional Digital Assets Survey (EY & Coinbase) * Stablecoins: Framing the Debate (BIS) The payment giants are forming a stablecoin supergroup Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are close to launching a shared stablecoin platform. Coinbase is exploring whether to participate. Each company has been building stablecoin infrastructure independently for years. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion in late 2024. Mastercard acquired BVNK earlier this year and just expanded on-chain settlement to USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD, enabling intraday, weekend, and holiday settlement. Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement network to nine blockchains in April. Now they are converging on shared rails. [CoinDesk] Why it matters: When three competitors stop competing on infrastructure and start pooling it, they are responding to a threat bigger than each other: fragmentation. Dozens of stablecoins on dozens of chains with no shared settlement standard. If this platform launches, it becomes the SWIFT replacement everyone has theorized about for years, except it will be owned by the companies that already process most of the world’s card transactions. We flagged this dynamic in our Money Movement 2.0 report: purpose-built payment infrastructure is displacing general-purpose blockchains for institutional settlement. This is the clearest proof yet. Deel gives 1.5 million workers a stablecoin account Deel, the global payroll platform used by 40,000 businesses and 1.5 million workers across 150+ countries, launched a stablecoin wallet built on Stripe’s full infrastructure stack. Bridge handles issuance via Open Issuance. Privy provides embedded wallets. Tempo handles settlement. The product is called DLUSD. Contractors receive dollar-denominated balances, can earn rewards on idle funds via Morpho, and spend anywhere via the Deel Card. Live today in Argentina, with LATAM, APAC, MENA, and Africa to follow. [Stripe] [Privy] Why it matters: This is the first time Stripe’s full crypto stack (Bridge + Privy + Tempo) has been deployed at real scale. The use case is not speculative. In Argentina, 85% of contractors wanted to be paid in US dollars rather than Argentine pesos in 2025, according to Deel. In Turkey, a local salary can lose 20-40% of its value in a single year. The blockchain is invisible to the contractor. What they see is dollars landing in their account. The banks are building “The Bridge” JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other major U.S. banks plan to launch a tokenized deposit network as early as H1 2027, operated by The Clearing House, a private-sector payments company owned by the consortium. Some banks call it “The Bridge.” Others call it “The Chain.” Clearing House CEO David Watson told the Wall Street Journal it marks a “big move for the banks,” adding that the industry faces a “radically different” future built around on-chain payments. Early users: large global companies seeking to streamline payments and treasury operations. [WSJ] [The Block] Why it matters: This is the consortium phase. Individual bank efforts have matured: JPMorgan’s Kinexys has settled over $3 trillion in cumulative transactions. BNY launched its own tokenized deposit service in January. The Clearing House already processes $2 trillion per day in traditional payments. If tokenized deposits plug into that volume, it creates a bank-native alternative to stablecoins for corporate treasury. As we described in Issue 180: the payment networks are building stablecoin rails, the banks are building tokenized deposit rails. Both racing toward instant, 24/7 settlement. The question is not which wins. It is whether they interoperate. Goldman Sachs tokenizes real estate Goldman Sachs, Apex Group, and Archax launched a blockchain-native real estate fund this week. Fund shares are tokenized using GS DAP, Goldman’s own blockchain platform. LRC Group manages the underlying real estate assets. Archax serves as custodian and first distribution partner. Ownera facilitates connectivity between participants and distribution channels. The fund is structured under Luxembourg regulation. “Issuing blockchain-native fund units on GS DAP enables investment in real estate assets with precision while unlocking more seamless transferability in the future,” said Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs. [CoinDesk] Why it matters: Real estate has been the white whale of tokenization: illiquidity, complex title structures, regulatory fragmentation. Goldman is solving the issuance and custody layer on infrastructure it controls (GS DAP), then using regulated distribution partners to build toward future transferability. The same week, Hamilton Lane launched HLSCOPE on Tron via Securitize, and Franklin Templeton brought BENJI to MoonPay. The tokenized fund distribution race is accelerating. Issuers are not waiting for one chain to win. They are going everywhere liquidity exists. DTCC picks Stellar What happened: On May 27, DTCC announced it will integrate DTC’s tokenization service with the Stellar blockchain, covering Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. This is the first public blockchain deployment of assets from DTC’s $114 trillion custody base. The initiative rests on an SEC No-Action Letter (December 2025) granting DTC a three-year pilot exemption. Limited production trades start July 2026, broader service launch in October 2026, with Stellar go-live targeted for H1 2027. DTCC is building a multi-chain stack: ComposerX for issuance and compliance, a Collateral AppChain on Hyperledger Besu with Chainlink, Canton Network for permissioned institutional rails, and now Stellar for public settlement. [PR Newswire] Why it matters: Stellar hosts Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund ($1.98B AUM), an SEC-registered tokenized money market fund operating since 2021, plus native USDC issuance ($256M outstanding). That five-year compliance audit trail made Stellar the only public chain with proven regulated fund infrastructure at scale. Despite “public” deployment, DTCC maintains centralized control: root wallet authority to freeze, force-transfer, or burn tokens, whitelisted addresses, and off-chain legal record via Cede & Co. under UCC Article 8. This is not DeFi. This is the existing custody infrastructure extending onto a public chain while keeping every legal protection intact. News Flashes Infrastructure and Markets * CME goes 24/7. CME Group launched round-the-clock crypto futures and options trading on CME Globex. Over the opening weekend, 7,200+ contracts traded, ~$50 million in notional volume. Bitcoin volatility contracts launched alongside. * Galaxy launches OTC prediction markets. Galaxy now offers institutional OTC prediction market trading. * Kaiko acquires Amberdata. Kaiko acquired Amberdata in a blockchain data consolidation push. Data infrastructure is consolidating fast. Banking and Payments * Visa and Brale explore private settlement. Visa announced a PoC with Brale for stablecoin settlement using SBC on the Canton Network. Privacy-enabled institutional payment flows. * MoneyGram stablecoin on Stellar. MoneyGram launched MGUSD on Stellar. The remittance giant joins the digital dollar payments rush. Funds, Deals and Others * Ether.fi deploys $100M into Plume. Ether.fi allocated $100 million to a Plume RWA vault. Real-world asset yield inside DeFi lending. * Franklin Templeton brings BENJI to MoonPay. The BENJI tokenized fund is now accessible via MoonPay. Tokenized fund distribution is becoming a competitive layer. That’s all for now, folks. – Marc & Team Loading... This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.51insights.xyz

    9 min

  4. May 29

    180: first bank to offer a stablecoin on a public blockchain

    Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team I’ve watched plenty of turf wars in this market. Never one like this. Minnesota just made running a prediction market a felony. Punishable by five years in prison. The same week, CFTC filed its proposed rule to govern prediction markets with the White House on Tuesday, and the same afternoon Donald Trump posted that the agency’s “exclusive authority over Prediction Markets” must be defended. Now, the Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the proposal. All of this is happening a week after Minnesota became the first state to ban prediction markets outright (SF4760, effective August 1), with the CFTC suing within 24 hours to block enforcement. Meanwhile former CFTC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler told CNBC the agency may not even have authority under Dodd-Frank to regulate prediction markets, predicting the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. [Read more on prediction markets] Here’s what else moved this week: * DTCC picked Stellar for tokenising securities * SoFi launches its first stablecoin * Coinbase added six new currencies to its institutional product * Bitwise just undercut 21Shares by 165 bps * Mastercard just cleared NYDFS * VanEck’s $61M treasury token got a DeFi lending venue And 15+ more signals. Let’s jump in 👇🌆 🚨 SAVE YOUR SPOT: We’re running two live panels next week with BCG on what banks and asset managers should actually be doing about digital assets. * Webinar 1: June 5, 10am EST, with Nadine Chakar (DTCC), Christian Schmid + Roy Choudhury (BCG). Inside the DTCC’s $100T tokenization buildout that goes live in October. * Webinar 2: June 8, 12:30pm CET, with Kim Hochfeld (State Street), Christian Schmid + Roy Choudhury (BCG). What live tokenization actually looks like, from the team that just shipped SWEEP, a tokenized private liquidity fund. 30 min each, 10 min live Q&A. Top Boardroom Reads * Project Agorá: A shared programmable platform for wholesale cross-border payments (BIS) * Stablecoin issuance is overrated, with Tony McLaughlin, Founder at Ubyx (51) * Banking in tokenised economy (IBM) * Beyond stablecoins: The emerging architecture of on-chain money (McKinsey) * Accelerating AI Investment in Emerging Markets (IFC) * Global Banking Annual Review 2026 (McKinsey) Top Signals This Week DTCC picked Stellar for tokenising securities On May 27, 2026, DTCC announced that it will integrate DTC’s tokenization service with the Stellar network, with the initial scope covering Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. The integration supports the full asset lifecycle, including corporate actions and reporting, rather than a wrapper or representation. Tokenized assets retain the same investor protections, entitlements, and safeguards as traditionally held securities. [RELEASE] Why it matters: The chain selection is a signal. Stellar offers compliance-first protocol, native token primitives, and predictably lower operating costs. And, it is the only public blockchain that has run an SEC-registered tokenized money market fund (BENJI) continuously for five years. WisdomTree and Amundi are also running their funds on Stellar. It is not avoiding Ethereum or EVM compatibility as the DTCC AppChain is built on Hyperledger Besu. Hyperledger Besu is handling settlement infrastructure. The DTCC’s AppChain is not issuing assets, it is moving them, matching them, and settling them between institutions. While, for tokenizing which includes asset creation, Stellar’s native token primitives do this cleanly, without smart contract risk and without unpredictable costs. Surprising for us that DTCC didn’t select Canton for this, given their partnership. 🚨 The Friday newsletter only scratches the surface. A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our PRO briefings. SoFi becomes the first bank to offer a stablecoin on a public blockchain On May 27, 2026, SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) made SoFiUSD available to retail members directly inside the SoFi app on Ethereum and Solana. The token is 1:1 redeemable for U.S. dollars from SoFi Bank, backed by liquid reserves on the bank’s balance sheet, and audited by an independent U.S.-licensed CPA. SoFi originally issued SoFiUSD in December 2025 to enterprise partners. Today’s announcement is the consumer rollout. [RELEASE] Why it matters: Under the GENIUS Act, permitted payment stablecoin issuers cannot pay holders any form of interest or yield. Tokenized deposits sit outside that prohibition and qualify for FDIC insurance. Only a chartered bank can issue them and SoFi has the charter. In this process, SoFiUSD reserves remain at SoFi Bank. Also, SoFi has 14.7M banked customers and now it has become the first bank to offer a stablecoin on a public blockchain. The acquisition cost on each is zero. Coinbase added six new currencies to its institutional product Coinbase announced on 26 May that Standard Chartered will provide multi-currency banking rails for Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Exchange institutional clients. The integration adds new direct rails in Australian dollars, Singapore dollars, Canadian dollars and Swiss francs. Euros and pounds settle through G-SIB-backed infrastructure, Standard Chartered itself is a global systemically important bank designated by the Financial Stability Board. [RELEASE] Why it matters: Coinbase’s Q1 2026 earnings showed institutional revenue of $136M, down 27% sequentially, with institutional trading volumes off 48% QoQ. The volume is drifting to competitors. Binance, Hidden Road, Kraken Prime and FalconX have spent two years building multi-jurisdictional prime brokerage with native multi-currency funding. A Tokyo hedge fund running BTC basis no longer has to convert JPY to USD to fund a Coinbase Prime account if it can use Hidden Road or Binance institutional in local currency. The Standard Chartered rails close that operational gap, retaining the users and capturing SEA markets. Bitwise just undercut 21Shares by 165 bps Bitwise Europe GmbH listed the Bitwise Canton ETP (BWCC) on Xetra today (ISIN: DE000A4ARTH9). The product tracks the Kaiko CANTO Reference Rate LDNLF index and holds CC tokens 1:1 in cold storage. Annual management fee is 0.85%. The ETP is BaFin-approved and domiciled in Germany, putting it inside the same regulatory wrapper as Bitwise’s BTCE, BTC1, and DA20 lineup. Why it matters: Unlike traditional crypto networks, participants can keep transaction data private on Canton while still interacting with counterparties across the network. That combination of privacy and interoperability has become Canton’s key differentiator. Unlike Ethereum (fully transparent, front-running risk) or JPMorgan’s Kinexys (private but closed, no rival bank will trust JPMorgan’s rails), Canton uses configurable sub-transaction privacy. DTCC tokenized U.S. Treasuries on Canton, running a pilot with 26 participants across 21 nodes. Tradeweb and BNY Mellon scaled Canton to $10B/day in repo. HSBC completed a pilot simulating the issuance, transfer, and atomic settlement of its Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS) on Canton. HKEX’s Synapse platform facilitates post-trade workflows for cross-border Northbound Stock Connect trades on Digital Asset’s DAML smart contract language. These aren’t experiments. They’re attempts to rebuild the plumbing of capital markets. 🚨 Want more intelligence and understand what this means for your institution? Subscribe to PRO below: Mastercard just cleared NYDFS NYDFS approved Mastercard Transaction Services (U.S.) LLC for a virtual currency business license under New York’s BitLicense framework on 27 May 2026. The license authorizes the unit to conduct virtual currency business activity in New York, including custody, transmission, exchange, and issuance. [RELEASE] Why it matters: The BitLicense is the keystone, because in U.S. payments, regulatory legibility is the moat. The federal GENIUS Act implementation rules are due by 18 July 2026, less than two months from this license. NYDFS approval is the most likely template federal regulators will recognize as fit-for-purpose. Mastercard acquired BVNK, partnered with SoFi to integrate SoFiUSD (SoFi’s dollar-backed stablecoin) as a settlement currency across Mastercard’s global payments network and its MTN is connected to JPMorgan’s Kinexys. Hence, they are pushing multiple startegies to connect different ledgers in the blockchain space. Related reads: VanEck’s $61M treasury token got a DeFi lending venue Securitize, the SEC-registered tokenization platform issuing VBILL ($61M total value), launched the fund live on a KPK-curated Euler vault on Thursday, May 28. Users can post VBILL as collateral, borrow other crypto assets, and run DeFi strategies while continuing to earn the underlying Treasury yield. The integration runs on Securitize’s DS Protocol, a compliance-aware framework that enforces transfer restrictions and investor eligibility checks onchain. Pricing data is supplied through RedStone oracles. VBILL launched in May 2025 across Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana with Wormhole bridging cross-chain liquidity. It charges a 0.20% management fee. Why it matters: Securitize is not building a fund, it is building a distribution layer. VBILL is the demo unit that proves regulated tokenized treasuries can multi-home across Aave and Euler without a vendor-lock decision. Apollo (ACRED), Hamilton Lane (SCOPE), KKR, and BNY all run on the same rails. Related reads: Other Signals Infrastructure and Markets * Paxos Securities Settlement Company (PSSC) received formal clearing agency registration from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Link * Samsung Securities, Samsung Card, and Samsung SDS are acquiring a combined 4% stake in Dunamu from Kakao for $407.7M. Link * Aave Labs’ UK subsidiaries, Push Labs Ltd. and Push Virtual Assets Ltd., secured FCA registration as cryptoasset exchange pr

    9 min
  5. Stablecoin issuance is overrated, with Tony McLaughlin, Founder & CEO at Ubyx

    May 27

    Stablecoin issuance is overrated, with Tony McLaughlin, Founder & CEO at Ubyx

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️ “I’m not a fan of stablecoins being co-opted by the cards world. I’m not a fan of cards on the front end of stablecoins because then the stablecoin is just another account feeding the legacy beast. This is not the intended future.” Tony McLaughlin spent two decades at Citigroup as managing director of emerging payments, where he authored the Regulated Liability Network whitepaper, the conceptual scaffolding the Fed prototyped in its RLN proof of concept and the BIS extended into Project Agora. He then founded Ubyx, where he raised $10M to build the the clearing system for tokenized money. In this conversation, we unpack why the “Tether/Circle duopoly” is a temporary trend, why every bank on earth is about to become a wallet provider, and why the “general-purpose” technology of blockchains will inevitably subsume special-purpose rails like ACH and SWIFT. “I disagree with anyone who believes there’s going to be an oligopoly in stablecoin issuance.” About Tony: Tony McLaughlin spent 20+ years at Citigroup, most recently as Managing Director of Emerging Payments. Earlier in his career he worked on continuous linked settlement at ABN AMRO and travelers' checks at Barclays in 1993, three decades of building payment infrastructure across every form factor that has ever existed. In March 2025 he left Citi to found Ubyx, the first global clearing system for stablecoins and tokenized deposits, with backing from Galaxy, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, VanEck, Paxos, LayerZero, Monerium and as of January 2026, Barclays, in what was the British bank's first-ever direct stablecoin infrastructure investment. He also convened the Tokenized Cash Management Advisory Group, a 20-corporate body that published its core principles for digital money in April. Why is it important: The total stablecoin float crossed $323B in May 2026. Barclays just took its first stablecoin equity position in Ubyx. JPMorgan moved JPMD onto Canton in January and is now processing $5B in daily transactions through Kinexys. Citi’s tokenized deposit volumes went from millions to billions in a year. Genius Act issuers are queuing up in the US. Europeans banks are racing with Qivalis. And the Bank of England's proposed £20,000 retail holding cap on systemic stablecoins. Proof of Talk is known as the Davos of Web3, bringing together the core 2500 decision-makers in Web3, happening on the 2nd and 3rd of June at the Louvre Palace in Paris. ​Major speakers include Jenny Johnson (CEO, Franklin Templeton), Tom Lee (Chairman, Fundstrat), Stani Kulechov (Founder & CEO, Aave), Tom Zschach (CIO, Swift), Adam Back, Elliot Hentov (State Street, Chief Macro Policy Strategist) and more. 🎧 Jump to the best parts * 00:00 Tony McLaughlin Introduction * 01:29 Why Tony Left Citi * 03:38 Why Stablecoin Monopolies Will Fail * 07:16 Why Tony Built Ubyx * 09:20 Why Stablecoins Could Collapse Payment Rails * 13:19 Why Banks Need Stablecoin Deposits * 17:27 The Real Stablecoin Business Model * 22:14 Consortium Stablecoins and CBDCs * 25:32 Building Ubyx * 29:14 AI Agents and Stablecoin Payments * 31:38 What Could Kill the Stablecoin Thesis * 34:00 TThe BlackBerry Comparison * 38:00 Corporate Adoption of Tokenized Money * 42:58 Lightning Round Proof of Talk is known as the Davos of Web3, bringing together the core 2500 decision-makers in Web3, happening on the 2nd and 3rd of June at the Louvre Palace in Paris. 51 Insights will be the official research partner. 👉 A few days to go: Grab your ticket now! Important Links * LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tony-mclaughlin-7b627a3 * X: https://x.com/stablemaximus * Whitepaper: https://www.ubyx.xyz/whitepaper * Website: https://ubyx.xyz/ Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts Our biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. The stablecoin duopoly is not the endgame More than 82% of the stablecoin market sits with two issuers: Tether ($189B) and Circle ($76B). And, almost everyone is looking at them as the dominate players even in the future. Tony’s argument and it’s the most important reframe of the conversation, is that this is exactly what every adolescent payment network looks like before it pluralises. There was a point in time when there were only a few credit card issuers, all dollar-denominated, all US-based. Today, there are roughly 16,000 card issuers globally and the market shows no fragmentation. The acceptance layer absorbs all of them invisibly. “Hundreds, and then thousands, of issuers. Hundreds of thousands, and then millions, of accepting points. I’ll be judged by that prediction over time.” Tony's analogy to AOL and CompuServe is sharp: walled-garden pioneers always look unassailable until the open network arrives and the moat turns out to have been the entire business. “America Online was the pre-internet portal to the information superhighway as we used to call it. There was something called CompuServe … All I'm saying is that what you observe at a point of time at the early stages of a market, if you extrapolate forward, you're probably making a mistake. And I think what's a far more likely outcome is that we will have eventually, and in the not too distant future, hundreds and then thousands … then millions of accepting points for tokenized money. Why do we agree with him: Currently, Stablecoin accounts for 0.02% of global payments volumes. We are just at the start. Related reads: 🚀 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. Let’s talk. 2. General-purpose technology always subsumes special-purpose technology Tony uses the “iPhone vs. Walkman” analogy to explain the future of payment rails. ACH, SWIFT, and Card Networks are special-purpose devices, they only do one thing (carry low-value messages, high-value messages, or authorizations). “In the same way that we don’t have physical alarm clocks and calculators and Walkmans anymore, I think the business case to build a special-purpose payments rail... will become difficult to justify.” Blockchains are general-purpose. They can represent a dollar, a stock, a piece of real estate, or a contract on the same infrastructure. Tony’s bet is that the cost-efficiency of general-purpose rails will eventually make special-purpose rails (like the current banking stack) obsolete. Related reads: 3. Banks are running the wrong playbook (Issue vs. Accept)

    44 min
  6. 8 of 9 recessions called, now he's calling bitcoin, with Cam Harvey, Economist

    May 22

    8 of 9 recessions called, now he's calling bitcoin, with Cam Harvey, Economist

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️ “Any asset that has annualized volatility four times greater than the stock market is not a safe haven asset. So we’re done right there.” I just spent an hour with Cam Harvey. Economist and Duke finance professor. He advises Man Group with $325B in AUM. His 1986 yield curve model has called every US recession since. Five for five. We sat down to unpack why his recession model gave a “false signal” in 2023, why AI agents are the secret growth engine for stablecoins, and why we are currently living through the most disruptive decade in human history. In this conversation, he prices Bitcoin’s digital-gold thesis, the agent-to-agent economy, the yield curve’s eight-of-nine recession record, and the four simultaneous technology disruptions he says CFOs are dangerously underestimating. Back in 1986, as a University of Chicago PhD student, he introduced a model that used the shape of the yield curve to predict recessions. It was heavily scrutinized at the time. Today, it boasts an 8-for-9 track record. [Read Thesis] “Bitcoin is not a substitute for gold. It might be a complement, but it is not a substitute.” That is a provocative stance from a man who literally wrote the book on DeFi and the Future of Finance. But Cam’s perspective isn't anti-crypto; it's hyper-rational. “Just gambling on crypto, that’s not solving any problem. What I’m interested in is doing stuff that increases both economic growth and economic well-being. And something like a stablecoin is fully equipped to do that.” Cam believes that DeFi will disrupt the traditional financial system by removing costly middlemen, increasing financial inclusion, and driving mass tokenization. And, this will happen as DeFi will eliminate centralized institutions like commercial banks, stock exchanges, and brokerages. About Campwell: Cam Harvey is Professor of Finance at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a past President of the American Finance Association. He is also Partner and Senior Advisor at Research Affiliates ($150B+ AUM) and an investment strategy advisor at Man Group, the world’s largest publicly listed hedge fund. He co-founded the Duke-Fed CFO Survey in 1997, still the most cited corporate sentiment study in the US, and authored “DeFi and the Future of Finance.” His Coursera specialization on decentralized finance has trained more than 102,000 students. His September 2025 paper “Gold and Bitcoin” is driving the institutional conversation about Bitcoin’s real risk profile in 2026. 🚨We’re opening sponsorships for our next podcast series. Top guests. Serious listeners. Claim your spot → 🎧 Jump to the best parts * 00:00 Cam Harvey Introduction * 02:09 The Aave Exploit Explained * 07:53 Why DeFi Still Matters * 12:30 What Happened With Aave and Kelp * 15:34 The Origin of the Yield Curve Model * 22:35 Why the 2022 Recession Never Happened * 30:20 Why Cam Entered Crypto and DeFi * 43:19 Why DeFi Solves Real Problems * 51:55 Bitcoin vs Gold * 57:18 Can Bitcoin Be Attacked * 01:00:56 The Duke Fed CFO Survey * 01:03:25 Stablecoins vs Banks * 01:07:13 Why CEOs Underestimate AI * 01:09:42 The Four Technological Disruptions * 01:15:18 AI and the Future of Education Important Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camharvey * X: https://x.com/camharvey * Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business: https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty/campbell-harvey * Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cajqjGAAAAAJ&hl=en * Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Harvey * Gold and Bitcoin: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5530719 * Tokenised Gold: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5995434 Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts 🚀 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. Let’s talk. Our biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. The yield curve model worked because everything else was wrong When Harvey presented his recession-prediction model in 1986, the criticism was simple: not enough data. Four recessions, four correct calls. Now it's five for five. The mechanism is elegant, the spread between a 10-year Treasury and a 3-month T-bill encodes forward-looking expectations about growth in a way that stock prices, with their volatility and absent maturities, never could. “A model is a simplification of reality. It looks at one thing, the difference between the yield on the 10-year and the yield on the Treasury bill. That’s it, one variable.” The 2022 inversion looked like a sixth hit coming. It wasn’t. Harvey went on record in real time calling it a false signal, and laid out five reasons: the model’s own publicity had changed CEO and CFO behavior, companies undertook prophylactic layoffs and slashed investment even without an actual downturn, and COVID-era stimulus artificially propped up consumption. The recession was partly managed away because enough people believed the model. “You might even think that that inversion in 2022 sufficiently changed behavior so that we dodged a potential recession.” This is a great example to assess how outcome changes when the signal is widely known. Market is very dynamic and the signal that work eventually change the behavior they were measuring. 2. The Kelp DAO exploit will trigger regulatory extinct The Aave incident that preceded this conversation, in which attackers drained $292 million from a smaller protocol, KelpDAO, used the stolen tokens as collateral on Aave to borrow ETH, and left Aave holding bad debt, got significant press. Harvey’s response was careful to avoid both dismissiveness and alarm. “The protocol operated exactly as it should have operated. Don’t interpret this as ‘we’ve seen this before, it’s no big deal.’ It is a big deal. It does point to improvement that’s necessary.” The regulatory problem is genuinely hard. am has a paper forthcoming in Research Policy on how to regulate decentralized protocols, and his point of view should worry anyone who thinks “ban it” is a viable response. His partial solution is indirect: regulated entities like Coinbase, if they choose to interact with a decentralized protocol, have legal liability exposure that gives them an incentive to pressure protocols toward better security. He also makes a point that frequently gets dropped in these conversations: 80% of the value of all U.S. paper currency is held in $100 bills. Almost no one uses them for legitimate transactions. Related reads: 3. Bitcoin is not digital gold, and calling it that is the wrong sale Harvey has published research on both Bitcoin and gold, and his conclusion is direct: they are not substitutes. The “digital gold” framing, he argues, is a marketing pitch that doesn’t survive contact with the data. “Any asset that has got annualized volatility that is four times greater than the stock market is not a safe haven asset. So we’re done right there.” The case against Bitcoin-as-gold runs on three tracks. * Volatility: drawdowns approaching 70% are not consistent with a store-of-value thesis. * Tangibility: gold has industrial, technological, and artistic applications that put a floor under its price. Bitcoin does not. * The 51% attack vector. Harvey sketches a credible scenario in which a well-capitalized actor takes a large short position in Bitcoin derivatives, then spends what he estimates is a feasible sum to acquire 51% of network hash power, driving the price toward zero as they profit on the short. For gold, no equivalent attack exists. On quantum computing, the other threat frequently cited, he is notably less alarmed. The technology to build quantum-proof wallets already exists. “The quantum attack I’m not as worried about, other than if these old public keys are harvested, there’s going to be a big sale of Bitcoin that could drive the price down somewhat.” Bitcoin may still be valuable. Harvey does not dismiss it. But it is a complement to gold, not a replacement, and conflating the two misleads both asset classes. Related podcast and reads: 4. Stablecoins are the dollar rails for the agent-to-agent economy

    1h 20m
  7. How stablecoins saved the dollar, with Brent Johnson, Santiago Capital

    May 15

    How stablecoins saved the dollar, with Brent Johnson, Santiago Capital

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️ Brent Johnson has spent roughly 25 years in financial markets, and he has one of the cleanest frameworks afor thinking about the dollar. Back in 2018, when the "de-dollarization" narrative was just starting to simmer, he stepped onto the global stage with a theory that sounded almost arrogant at the time. He called it the Dollar Milkshake Theory. But one phrase that made me more curious was: “Stablecoins are a stealth weapon of empire. They are quietly re-dollarizing the world from the bottom up. They do something no military base or trade agreement ever could.” That is a strong phrase, but in this conversation, it was not used for effect. It was used as a description of what is already happening. The logic is straightforward. If people around the world want to hold dollars, but they want them in a form that is faster, cheaper, and easier to move than the legacy banking system allows, stablecoins become the obvious answer. And because dollar stablecoins have to be backed by dollar assets, that creates new demand for U.S. Treasury securities. Dollar Milkshake Theory, a framework he first laid out in 2018 that argued, against almost universal consensus at the time, that the U.S. dollar would strengthen precisely as the rest of the world printed more money. It was controversial then. It looks prescient now. The DXY is hovering around 99.66 even as gold has already crossed $5,000, which is, strangely, exactly what Brent said would happen. So I sat down with him to ask the next question. Now that the milkshake thesis has largely played out, what is the new chapter? And where do stablecoins, tariffs, a $39 trillion national debt, and a potential sovereign crisis all fit together? His answer was one of the most coherent explanations I have heard of, where the dollar actually goes from here, and why the U.S. government’s decision to let private companies issue dollar-backed stablecoins may be the smartest geopolitical move of the decade. About Brent: Brent Johnson is the founder and CEO of Santiago Capital, a San Francisco-based registered investment advisor founded in 2011. He holds an MBA in International Business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and began his career as an auditor at Philip Morris before moving through Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York City. He has spent roughly 25 years in global macro markets and is the creator of the Dollar Milkshake Theory, first articulated publicly in 2018. Alongside his RIA practice, he runs a standalone institutional research subscription at research.santiagocapital.com. In June 2025, he joined Monetary Metals' advisory board, advising on the distribution of gold-backed fixed-income products, including gold leases and bonds. He hosts a weekly show called Milkshakes, Markets and Madness on YouTube. 🚨We’re opening sponsorships for our next podcast series. Top guests. Serious listeners. Claim your spot → 🎧 Jump to the best parts * 02:37 Understanding the Dollar Milkshake Theory * 05:38 The Relationship Between Inflation and Dollar Strength * 08:27 The Role of Gold in the Dollar Milkshake Theory * 11:00 Stablecoins as a Stealth Weapon of Empire * 16:16 The Global Demand for Stablecoins * 21:51 Bitcoin’s Role in the Financial Landscape * 27:10 Potential Sovereign Debt Crisis * 32:29 Looking Ahead: Economic Outlook and Global Events Important Links * Website: https://santiagocapital.com/about/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-johnson-40a8461/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvlmVy6Q0a9uC1jRFRpp8Q * Dollar Milkshake Theory Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts 🙌 A note from 51: Start a research-driven growth campaign with us and reach 100k+ decision makers across digital assets and finance. Our biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. The milkshake was never about the dollar being great, it was about everything else being worse When Brent first presented the Dollar Milkshake Theory in 2018, most people in macro were calling for dollar decline. The argument against him was simple: the U.S. had too much debt, was printing too much money, and the world was moving toward alternatives. He was not arguing against any of that. He was arguing that none of it mattered if everyone else was in worse shape. The name itself comes from the film There Will Be Blood, in which an oil executive tells a rival landowner that he does not need to buy the land to get the oil beneath it. He just puts his straw in from his side of the fence. “The United States has the straw. And when the rest of the world prints money, the United States sucks up all that capital into their own markets.” That is largely what happened over the following six years. The U.S. attracted more foreign capital than any other country in the world. The Fed raised rates from zero to five percent in under a year, something many observers said was impossible without breaking the economy. It did not break it, at least not in the way people expected. And through all of it, the dollar stayed stronger than almost anyone predicted. The most common misreading of the theory, Brent says, is that people thought he was predicting dollar strength at the expense of everything else. He was not. “I never said the dollar was going to go higher and everything else was going to collapse. I said the dollar would go higher, but gold would go higher, that U.S. equities would go higher, that U.S. dollar assets would go higher.” His original price targets were a DXY of 150 and gold at $5,000. Gold hit $5,000. The dollar never reached 150, it peaked around 114 in 2022 and currently sits near 99.66. By his own accounting, the gold call was a 400% return from where he made it; the dollar call was a 50-60% move. He never claimed the dollar would outperform gold. Most of his critics did not notice that distinction. The deeper point is the difference between relative strength and absolute purchasing power. The dollar can be losing value against real goods while simultaneously rising against every other currency. Both things are true at once. “You can have a rising dollar on a relative basis, but still have it lose purchasing power versus real things. And this is something that people need to understand, when I talk about a strong dollar, I don’t mean your purchasing power. What I mean is versus foreign currencies.” This matters enormously if you live outside the United States. When the dollar strengthens, every country that has to import goods or services dollar-denominated debt feels the squeeze, often violently. The U.S. middle class might feel richer on paper, while people in Turkey, Argentina, or Nigeria find that their savings have quietly been cut in half. Related podcast and reads: 2. Gold ultimately wins, but you still need dollars to operate right now Brent is not against gold. He thinks gold is the ultimate beneficiary of the global monetary system’s dysfunction. “The dollar doesn’t ultimately win. Gold ultimately wins. So for anybody who needs to hear me say that again, gold is the ultimate winner of the milkshake. But in the short term, you still need dollars to operate on the global stage.” The proof of this showed up in real time during the recent escalation in the Middle East. As the Strait of Hormuz disruptions sent oil prices sharply higher, gold and silver pulled back. So did Bitcoin. The reason was: countries that needed to buy now-expensive energy had to sell whatever they held to get dollars first. The mechanism was visible, live, in the market. “Those who needed to transact on the global stage had to sell their gold to get dollars to buy the oil that was now priced 50% higher than it was a month ago. And I think that’s a demonstration that to operate on the global stage, you still need dollars.” Gold going to $10,000 is still possible in Brent’s view. But a voluntary return to the gold standard is not. Governments will not willingly put financial handcuffs on themselves, because a gold standard limits how much they can spend, and politicians do not win elections by saying no. “If governments did go back to a gold standard, they would have to massively devalue their currencies against gold when they did it. A lot of people would lose all of their savings. And once they had that constraint, their gold holdings would put a restriction on how much money they could spend. But politicians get elected by saying yes.” If a gold standard ever comes back, Brent believes it will be forced on governments from the outside, not chosen. A reset after a crisis, not a planned reform. Related podcast and reads: 3. Stablecoins are not an escape from the dollar system; they are the dollar system, upgraded

    36 min
  8. Why “DeFi is dead” and what replaces it with Sidney Powell, CEO of Maple Finance

    May 12

    Why “DeFi is dead” and what replaces it with Sidney Powell, CEO of Maple Finance

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️ In January 2026, Sidney Powell went on record with CoinDesk and said a high-profile on-chain credit default was coming. Three months later, Aave, one of the largest crypto lending platforms in the world, found itself sitting on up to $230M it might never get back, following the Kelp cascade. [Read CEO Notes] Sid didn’t predict Aave specifically. But he understood why something like it was inevitable. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance, one of the biggest DeFi protocols. Maple has done more than $21B in loans under its newer model, with zero credit losses on overcollateralized lending since 2023. When I sat down with him, I wanted to understand two things: what actually went wrong at Aave, and why Maple had managed to avoid anything like it. The answers turned out to be the same: DeFi is dead. “My view was in saying DeFi is dead, that DeFi is this kind of niche product category with an insular community. That concept is dead... Over time, it won’t be referred to as DeFi. It’ll just be referred to as finance.” How Maple survived 2022: 2022 was when the idea of crypto lending almost died. The big names, Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis, all collapsed. They’d been making loans backed by promises and assumptions rather than real collateral in real custody. When prices fell, the collateral wasn’t there. Most people looking at that wreckage concluded that crypto lending was done. Maple concluded the opposite. “Everybody was saying crypto lending was done. But we took the contrarian view that this is literally the oldest profession in finance, lending, and what are the odds it’s not going to be around in the next couple of years?” They rebuilt around collateralized loans, kept the legal structures that most of DeFi ignores, and waited. The competitors never came back. Maple did. By April 2026, it manages over $4B in assets. Monthly transfer volume is running at $9.6B. Active loans are at $2.4B, up 48% over 2025. About Sidney: Sidney Powell grew up in Australia, worked in securitization at a major bank, then became Treasurer at a commercial fintech lender. He’s been involved in more than a billion dollars in corporate bond issuance. He co-founded Maple in 2019 with Joe Flanagan. Under his leadership, the platform has facilitated more than $20B in total loan originations as of early 2026, with assets under management (AUM) reaching approximately $5B. Powell has positioned Maple as a key player in the "on-chain credit" sector, focusing on bringing high-grade institutional structures like automated margin calls and tri-party custody to the digital asset space. 🚨We’re opening sponsorships for our next podcast series. Top guests. Serious listeners. Claim your spot → 🎧 Jump to the best parts * 00:00 Why DeFi Matters * 02:37 DeFi Is Dead or Evolving * 04:21 What Happened with Kelp and Aave * 08:44 Can DeFi Handle Risk * 11:05 How Institutions Should View This Crisis * 14:36 Maple vs Aave Models * 19:12 Permission less vs Permissioned Finance * 22:13 Institutional Lending Explained * 27:19 Future of DeFi Architecture * 30:13 Regulation and the US Market * 32:16 Global Institutional Adoption * 34:44 What Comes Next for Maple * 36:22 Key Trends to Watch Important Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidneypowell/ * Maple: https://maple.finance/about * X: https://x.com/syrupsid * Syrup: https://maple.finance/syrup * CfC St. Moriz: https://cfc-stmoritz.com/profiles/sidney-powell Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts 🙌 Work with us: Start a research-driven growth campaign and reach 100k+ decision makers across digital assets and finance. Our biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. The problem with crypto lending was never the crypto part It was the lending part. Specifically, the parts that make lending work, who takes the first loss, what happens when collateral falls, and who you can go after if things go wrong, got skipped in the rush to make everything open and automatic. Ignoring these questions is why Celsius collapsed, why BlockFi collapsed, and why Aave is now working through hundreds of millions in potential bad debt. "More things can happen than will happen." Sidney explained the gap of Aave: Aave is built to handle falling collateral. When the value of what you’ve deposited drops, automated systems kick in and start selling it before the loan goes underwater. The whole thing depends on having enough time to do that. The Kelp DAO hack removed that time completely. “The asset was worth $100 one minute, and then roughly $80 the next. So it bypassed the level at which it could have been liquidated without a loss.” And because Aave doesn’t have contracts with its borrowers, anyone can deposit anything, no paperwork, there was nobody to go after once the damage was done. What made it worse: because Aave is designed to run itself with no human override, other users could see what was happening and made rational decisions that made things worse. They pulled their own collateral. They borrowed more while they still could. The platform wasn’t hacked. It just worked exactly as designed, in a situation nobody had fully planned for. “If I give you $100 of collateral and borrow $80 from you, if you default, I have a problem. I can either try and withdraw my surplus collateral from you, or I can try and borrow more from you. Ordinarily, if you’re having bad debt issues, you wouldn’t do that for me, but because Aave is an immutable protocol, users could do that.” Related podcast and reads: 2. The banks need Maple more than Maple needs them

    37 min
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