Welcome back!
Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:
Lazarus Group: Inside the Chinese crime ring cleaning North Korea's crypto.
Test Environment: Morgan Stanley to test blockchain services with new unit.
Stablecoin Terminal: Bloomberg launches a stablecoin analytics dashboard.
Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer remains a Bitcoin bull, proving that even the sharpest minds in Boston have a soft spot for a comeback kid.
Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!
Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.
Spotlight
Sleepless Stocks
Last week Powerus Corporation, an American drone-defence company, went public on Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings. And within 24 hours it had launched tokenised shares on Solana, enabling round-the-clock onchain trading.
It is tempting to file this under crypto exuberance. A reverse merger, a defence start-up, and a blockchain listing read like a bingo card for sceptics. Yet, the plumbing deserves a closer look, for six reasons:
The first is redemption. The tokenised shares are backed one-to-one by conventional stock, and holders can redeem them for the underlying shares and move those into a standard brokerage account.
The second is time. Tokenised shares trade around the clock, so the market no longer stops when New York goes to bed.
The third is settlement. Trades in tokenised shares clear onchain in seconds, while even Nasdaq's newly approved tokenised trading still runs on a T+1 cycle.
The fourth is reach. To buy tokenised shares, an investor in Singapore or São Paulo needs only a crypto wallet, not an American brokerage account.
The fifth is composability. Tokenised shares can double as collateral, and Aave and Kamino already accept them against stablecoin loans.
The sixth is transparency. Tokenised shares can be held in fractions, and every trade sits on a public ledger.
None of this guarantees that Powerus will prosper. Drones are a hard business, and reverse mergers carry baggage. But the experiment points to something bigger. Equity markets were built around opening bells, clearing houses, and local intermediaries. Now, each is becoming optional.
Wall Street never sleeps, as the saying goes. And soon, it won't even have to pretend.
Chart Of The Week
News Bites
Joint Venture: Crypto exchange OKX and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange have filed with the SEC to launch a regulated, 24/7 tokenised U.S. stock trading platform. The joint venture, OKXICE, aims to offer round-the-clock trading in 63 major NYSE-listed companies, with full dividend and voting rights.
Test Environment: Morgan Stanley has launched a Digital Asset Lab to safely test blockchain-native financial technologies without putting its core systems at risk. The bank plans to experiment with stablecoins, tokenised deposits, tokenised money-market funds, central bank digital currencies, and DeFi vaults.
Infrastructure Partnership: BNY is reportedly in talks with Kraken parent Payward about an infrastructure partnership. The proposed tie-up spans digital asset custody, trading, payments, wealth management, and market infrastructure.
Blockchain Settlement: Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed a seven-day pilot in which $750,000 was settled in USDC, with funds reaching Visa in under an hour, including on weekends.
Leveraged ETPs: The SEC has approved a Cboe BZX rule change allowing Volatility Shares to list triple-leveraged funds, including 3x Bitcoin and 3x Ether ETPs. While this clears the exchange-listing hurdle, trading cannot begin until the SEC declares the individual funds' Form S-1 registration statements effective.
Lazarus Group: A crypto investigator infiltrated a Chinese organised crime syndicate that has laundered $1B+ across multiple exploits for Lazarus Group. Posing as a client, he fronted $350K to win the launderers' trust, and the intel he gathered helped freeze $442K in stolen Bybit funds.
Caught In 4K
Weekly Take
Keks & Giggles
And that's a wrap!
You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line.
Talk soon!
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.
