Welcome back!

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:

Investing and trading were never as different as the industry pretended. Prediction markets ended the charade and venture capital is rewarding that honesty.

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter! 

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Money Rewired

For half a century, global finance has run on plumbing built for a slower world.

Trades execute, then clearing happens, then settlement follows days later, with reconciliation trailing behind. This sequential choreography was designed for an era of paper ledgers and telex machines. The IMF, in a blog published last week, has essentially admitted the industry never fixed it, it just got better at tolerating it.

That tolerance, the IMF argues, is precisely what tokenization threatens to end. Having said that, the IMF's argument cuts deeper than the usual tokenization boosterism about faster transactions and cheaper fees. Moving assets and liabilities onto shared digital ledgers does not merely accelerate the old process, it collapses it entirely. Execution, clearing, and settlement can now happen at once, governed by software instead of institutional handoffs. That is not an upgrade to the system. It is a different system entirely.

And here is where it gets uncomfortable for the incumbents. If code executes what banks and clearinghouses used to negotiate, then risk stops living where it has always lived. It migrates toward the infrastructure providers and the developers writing smart contracts. The balance sheet stops being the fortress.

The IMF's own conclusion is the most radical part of the piece, buried in the diplomatic language international institutions favour. Whether tokenization strengthens the financial system or fragments it depends on decisions being made right now, including something the IMF calls “code governance”. Read that plainly. The IMF is placing the rules governing smart contracts in the same bucket as legal frameworks and liquidity backstops, the traditional tools of monetary stability.

That is not a footnote. That is the IMF saying, without quite saying it, that code governance is becoming monetary policy. Central banks spent a century mastering interest rates as their primary lever. They may soon need to master something closer to software audits as well.

Going Onchain: Robinhood has launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, marking its most significant step yet towards bringing capital markets onto blockchain rails. The network enables eligible users in more than 120 countries to trade tokenised US equities around the clock, while also introducing Robinhood Earn, offering an estimated 7%APY on the dollar-backed stablecoin USDG, alongside onchain lending functionality.

Dollar Stablecoin: Open Standard last week unveiled Open USD, a dollar-backed stablecoin supported by a broad coalition of traditional finance and digital asset firms. The initiative brings together banks, payment networks, technology companies, and crypto-native businesses, with founding partners including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Google, BNY, and Coinbase.

European Stablecoins: Crédit Agricole, France's second-largest bank by assets under management, has unveiled EURXT, a euro-denominated stablecoin. The token is backed one-to-one by reserves held at Caceis Bank and structured to comply with the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. EURXT's circulation remains modest, with 20 million EURXT issued on Ethereum, dwarfed by Circle's EURC, at roughly 378 million, and Société Générale's EURCV, at about 124 million. Notably, EURXT has already been deployed in a live settlement, funding a subscription into a tokenized Amundi money market fund. 

Global Banking: Standard Chartered has launched a service granting institutional clients direct access to USDC minting and redemption. The offering is designed to let institutions move value between traditional and digital financial rails with greater speed and transparency. Crucially, it makes Standard Chartered the first globally systemically important bank to offer integrated USDC minting and redemption through a single onboarding process, sparing clients the need to hold accounts directly with Circle.

Prediction Markets: The European Securities and Markets Authority has warned that certain prediction markets may fall foul of the bloc's existing prohibition on marketing and distributing binary options to retail investors. The statement follows months of fragmented enforcement action across European jurisdictions. The regulatory squeeze is not confined to Europe, either, as Kalshi and Polymarket continue to navigate a patchwork of state-level gambling challenges in the United States, even while retaining federal backing from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

And that's a wrap!

You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line.

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}