Weekly Newsletter, 14 March 2025

The Satellite View is out!

The Satellite View is out! You can read it here.

Two significant developments caught our attention in the past week:

Firstly, during the Morgan Stanley TMT conference, Coinbase’s CFO Alesia Haas said that the firm is looking at tokenizing $COIN stock and other securities. This would be a milestone not to be underestimated vis-à-vis the convergence of crypto and traditional finance. Tokenized Coinbase stock tradable on blockchain rails would raise an interesting dilemma for equity fund managers. If you are for instance an equity long/short hedge fund you have a fiduciary duty to your investors. So, if this hedge fund owns Coinbase stock, how on earth can you justify “only” trading 9.30am-4pm five days a week, when there is an option to trade the tokens 24/7? What if news hits on a Sunday like last weekend? The trader of the equity will be flat footed at 9.30am on Monday, whilst the holder of Coinbase tokens will have already traded on the news. (Coincidence or not, shortly after, NASDAQ announced that they are going to introduce 24 hour trading, but only on weekdays. Close but no cigar).

It is then a small step to imagine, that once investors have onboarded to these crypto-rails, they will probably start trading blockchain native assets as well, leading a lot of traditional investors to consider these new business models built using blockchain technology. A move like this would not have been imaginable pre-November 2024. Indeed a similar plan was hatched and then rapidly abandoned in 2020. But with a supportive congress on both sides of the aisle, and the SEC’s new crypto task force, the door is now open to renew these initiatives and make it happen. There is a great X thread on this posted by Seth Ginns from our manager CoinFund (here ).

It would also be another boon for stablecoins, as the preferred trading pair for these tokenized equities would be good old US dollars. Which brings me to the second interesting development. Last Friday we saw the first Digital Asset Summit take place in the US, a group that included the President as well as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (again, unimaginable 5 months ago). Scott Bessent was on record saying “As President Trump has directed, we are going to keep the U.S. the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we will use stablecoins to do that”. Furthermore, he said he would work with the Office of the Controller of the Currency and the IRS to rescind any guidance that undermine the digital asset markets as well as mentioning that his agency would work on a “stablecoin regime”. The President chimed in by stating: “I also want to express my strong support for the efforts of lawmakers in Congress as they work on bills to provide regulatory certainty for dollar backed stablecoins and the digital assets market”.

At Theta we have long held the opinion that blockchain is great for US dollars as that is the most sought after currency in the world. Someone in Argentina much rather holds dollars than bitcoin, I’d imagine.

To get more insight on the future of stablecoins and tokenization, check out p82 of the Satellite View and watch the Legends4Legends talk here, where Head of Digital Assets at Blackrock, Robbie Mitchnick and Nic Carter of Castle Island discuss exactly these two topics.

Financial markets are moving on-chain. The infrastructure networks that facilitate this are likely to become incredibly valuable.

Also this week

Relevant financial updates

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, raised $2 billion from Abu Dhabi-based MGX
Mesh, a stablecoin payments platform, raised $82 million from Paradigm, Consensys, and others
Axelar*, a bridging protocol, raised $30mln in a token sale from Electric Capital, Laser Digital, and others
August*, a DeFi prime brokerage platform, raised $10 million from Dragonfly, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, and others
Offline Protocol*, a decentralized messaging protocol, raised $1 million from Portal Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, and others
Vest Exchange, a decentralized exchange, raised $5 million from Jane Street, Amber Group, Big Brain Holdings, and others
Rakurai*, a Solana staking protocol, raised $3 million from Anagram Ventures, Slow Ventures, Colosseum, and others
Moonpay*, a crypto payments business, acquired Iron, a stablecoin infrastructure company
Arda, a tokenized real estate platform, raised $3 million from Lightshift and others
Sogni.ai, a decentralized AI platform for creators, raised $2 million from Comma3 Ventures, Republic, Formless Capital, and others.

*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 14/03

Interesting things to read

Upcoming events

Digital Asset Summit 2025, New York
Legends4Legends 2025, Amsterdam