Welcome back!

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

Capital doesn't have loyalty, it has appetite, and right now it may be sprinting from AI's crowded trade into crypto's open field.

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

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Category Gap

Circle has been a public company for more than a year, long enough for the sell side to reach a settled view. 

It has not. 

Price targets on the stablecoin issuer run from $37 to $243, a 6.6-fold gap for the same company on the same day, against a current price of about $88 and a median call near $100. You do not see this with Visa or Mastercard, where estimates cluster within a sensible band.

This is not analysts being careless. It is a signal that Circle has fallen into a category gap. 

The models that Wall Street reaches for assume a business is one of three things: a payment network that earns interchange, a bank that earns a spread on its balance sheet, or an asset manager that earns fees on assets under management. Circle is a chimera of all three. Each analyst anchors on a different comparison and arrives at a wildly different number.

That volatility, then, is the market thinking out loud, not failing.

It cuts against both the efficient and the irrational camps: prices here are neither wrong nor settled, but provisional. It also carries a warning that travels well beyond payments. Domain mastery becomes a liability at every paradigm shift, and the analysts with the deepest Visa and Mastercard track records may be the least equipped to price a business that inverts their assumptions.

For patient investors that confusion is the opportunity. Circle, the company defining a new financial rail, will be misunderstood long before it is obvious. And by the time the models agree, the repricing will already have happened.

Crypto Regulation: The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets,” a framework offering token issuers a path to raise capital without full securities registration through a startup exemption of up to $5mn over four years, a fundraising exemption of up to $75mn every 12 months, and a safe harbour that delinks a token from its investment contract once the issuer has completed the essential managerial efforts it promised. Also, the proposal asserts federal preemption of state registration, replacing the current patchwork with a single national path. Arriving with the CLARITY Act still stalled in Congress, it stops short of comprehensive crypto clarity but marks the first SEC framework for how a tokenised capital raise begins, operates, and potentially exits securities treatment.

American Onshoring: President Trump said US regulators, led by Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Michael Selig, were working to build a compliant legal framework to bring the offshore perpetual futures platform Hyperliquid into the United States. Hyperliquid is one of the largest decentralised venues for perpetual futures and has pioneered pre-IPO perpetuals, cash-settled contracts that track the expected valuation of private companies such as SpaceX before they list. US persons are currently excluded from the platform, and no approved domestic framework yet allows American retail traders to access the products.

Stablecoin Wars: Visa is searching for a new stablecoin settlement partner that offers multi-regional licensing capabilities, after rival Mastercard scooped up its previous provider, BVNK. The scramble further underscores how quickly digital-dollar settlement has become contested territory among the card networks.    

Bitcoin Custody: Citigroup plans to launch Bitcoin custody for institutional clients later in 2026. The service forms part of the bank's new Custody+ platform, which brings cryptocurrency and traditional assets such as stocks and bonds into a single framework.

Toyota Wallet: Toyota's finance arm has launched a tokenised bond that retail investors can buy directly through the Japanese carmaker's mobile payment app, Toyota Wallet. The ¥1bn issue carries a 1.72 per cent annual interest rate and will be managed on a private blockchain.

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.}