Last week, when I outlined the 3 interest-income revenue models for stablecoins , I had no idea just how much bigger the opportunity would become a few days later - courtesy of the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) .  On Friday, in a dramatic reversal, the OCC scrapped Biden-era restrictions that had kept US banks from engaging in stablecoin transactions and crypto custody. Overnight, the stablecoin market’s potential didn’t just grow—it likely 10x’d .  With

Last week was a defining moment for stablecoins. Top CEOs from major U.S. financial institutions made bold statements about their stance on stablecoins, signaling a decisive shift in the industry: Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan : "If regulators make that leap, we will enter the stablecoin business." PayPal CEO, Alex Chriss : “With an estimated 20 to 60 million monthly active crypto users3, the potential for commerce is immense. For merchants, this means unlocking a new,

At the recent RWA London Summit, one topic dominated my panel discussion: tokenized assets as collateral .  A variety of views emerged, including using more exotic tokenized assets other than tokenized MMF as collateral.  While I recognize the potential of these alternative assets, I made one thing clear—this is a conversation about the future, not the present. Right now, tokenized products must meet investor demands, and illiquid assets simply don’t. Even the most prestigiou

Mapping out the biggest US banks digital asset businesses and benchmarking against comparable revenue data

As institutional tokenization gained momentum rapidly last week with CFTC inviting crypto CEOs  to discuss stablecoins as possible eligible collateral in the derivatives market and Senator Bill Hagerty introducing his stablecoin bill, the urgency with which firms are looking at their tokenization strategy is palpable in my conversations.  It has become apparent to me critical to anyone’s tokenization strategy is a GTM playbook that articulates product, tech, ecosystem and reg

This week, Apollo Global Management teamed up with Securitize to launch a tokenized feeder fund for the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund ($ACRED), aiming to bring tokenized private credit to institutional and accredited investors. A bold move. But here’s the harsh reality—it’s not going to gain traction. In this week’s research issue, I’ll break down exactly why this initiative is set to fail. More importantly, I’ll explain why asset managers hoping to pump up their

A week that changed everything in digital asset/crypto space... Here is what happened.

In 2024, BlackRock, Brevan Howard, UBS all entered the tokenized MMF race. Here is the GTM playbook for asset managers looking to enter...

World's top 20 stablecoin geographic markets unpacked

What are the top 3 digital asset adoption trends? Here I distill the most important adoption trends from 2024 that you need to know for 2025

Stablecoin is the biggest tokenization success story but it faces a silent threat that could derail it all...

Another week, another busy tokenization announcement calendar with 5 big developments. I published a highlight recap here . Out of the 5, the most consequential has to be the news that the UK government plans to issue digital gilts, the UK government bond equivalent to US Treasuries, on blockchain. Why? Because the fastest growing tokenization vertical - tokenized MMF/US Treasuries  - while signalling an insatiable demand from onchain capital to access the US sovereign debt m

Last week was particularly busy for tokenization space. There were 5 announcements about the development or the launch of tokenized MMF, including 3 from institutional players. UBS Asset Management launched its first tokenized investment fund, the UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund, on Ethereum. The fund will be domiciled in Hong Kong serving the APAC region with DigiFT as the distributor. Citi and Fidelity International have developed a solution that combines a tokenized m

Want to what is Standard Chartered's digital asset strategy? Full research here.

With trillions of dollars transferred annually, tokenized money is the undisputed leader in tokenization adoption—dominating the digital asset space far beyond traditional banking while proving its superiority vs the traditional settlement rail. Banks are now racing to catch up, eager to integrate tokenized money into their offerings and avoid getting left behind. But what should banks focus on when designing and launching their own tokenized money products? In this week’s n

Lloyds Banking Group recently published an excellent article on the transformative power of blockchain and tokenization. It was the first time a financial institution put out a paper that non-technical readers can pick up and grasp things intuitively.  I found its social messaging groups and ship containers analogies to be extremely poignant to abstract away complex concepts and get to the core functional differentiations.  To distill the full article into its most important

Happy August. I hope many of my readers are receiving this week’s newsletter from somewhere paved with warm white sand and dotted with lazily swinging palm trees.  As we savour these warmer months of the year, I thought it would be the perfect time to take stock of the 2024 tokenization market by looking at all the money that went into funding this years’ tokenization startups. Where are investors putting their money? The 3 key questions we are looking to answer: Who are the

A few weeks ago I started the series “How will tokenized MMF scale to trillions AUM?” We looked at three traditional finance use cases that are likely to adopt tokenization for immediate benefits and that benefits scaled into very large numbers. Having looked at US corporate cash management and derivatives collateral management in part 1  and part 2 , we are wrapping up the series with intraday repo as our last stop. Unlike the other two use cases, intraday repo is a new mark

How big are the US corporate cash management & global derivatives collateral opportunities for tokenized MMF?

How will tokenized MMFs change the financial system one market at a time.