The Briefing Memo from The Venture Dept.

June 2025

June 30, 2025

The Briefing Memo

June 2025 - If you’re new here, welcome to The Briefing Memo, which features the latest insights and updates from The Venture Dept.

June was a monumental month for the digital asset ecosystem, marked by Circle's IPO. Debuted at $31 a share, CRCL reached a high of $291 and has recently been trading around $200 for the past week, representing a market cap of over $40B. While it's anyone's guess where it will be six months from now, it's clear stablecoins, tokenization, and digital assets more broadly are fast becoming a foundational component of the future of finance.

Matt spoke at the Cantina Summit alongside Jake Lynch of Cantina and L1D, Devin Walsh of Uniswap Foundation, and Maya Caddle of the Solana Foundation. Our panel starts around the 40:00 minute mark.

Policy Updates

Another month brings more meaningful developments in crypto policy. Most notably, the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, marking a major milestone. Now, attention turns to whether the House will pass it cleanly or seek to amend it by adding market structure provisions.

But beyond the GENIUS Act, two under-the-radar developments deserve attention, both of which signal a shift toward deeper, more thoughtful engagement with crypto at the federal level.

The first is a compelling speech delivered by SEC Chair Paul Atkins at the agency’s DeFi roundtable. It stood out for two reasons. First, Atkins anchored his remarks in core American values such as liberty, innovation, and property rights, and directly connected them to decentralized finance. This kind of first-principles framing is rare from regulators, who often operate within the bounds of “how things have always been done.” For example, he emphasized that “self-custody of one’s private property” is a foundational American value that should not be forfeited online. He went on to describe DeFi as an expression of “economic liberty, private property rights, and innovation,” American values he believes are encoded in the DNA of the DeFi movement. He also highlighted that while we’ve seen centralized crypto platforms buckle under stress, “many on-chain systems continued to operate as designed pursuant to open-source code.” This is a regulator willing to reimagine the financial system from the ground up, not merely tweak around its edges.

The second development came from a less expected corner, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. FHFA Director William Pulte issued an order directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who collectively underpin roughly 70% of the U.S. mortgage market, to explore how cryptocurrency can be incorporated into mortgage loan risk assessments. As digital assets like Bitcoin become increasingly significant stores of wealth, this policy direction could empower more Americans to productively leverage these assets to qualify for a home loan.

Here's a snapshot of other major developments from the month of June:

  • US Congress: The GENIUS Act, a stablecoin regulatory framework, passed the Senate 68–30 and now heads to the House. The CLARITY Act, the market structure legislation that would delineate oversight roles between the SEC and the CFTC by granting the CFTC jurisdiction over digital commodities and mature blockchain systems while preserving the SEC's authority over investment contracts involving digital assets and other securities, has advanced through House committees. In parallel, Senate Republicans on the Banking Committee released market structure principles and are targeting a full bill by September. Other notable developments include Senator Adam Schiff’s COIN Act, which would bar certain officials and their families from issuing or endorsing digital assets, and the House’s passage of the Deploying American Blockchains Act, aimed at accelerating domestic blockchain innovation.

  • White House and Executive Agencies: President Trump has pressed the House to quickly pass the GENIUS Act without modifications or delays, emphasizing a need for a "clean" bill.

  • Federal Regulators: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins called for regulatory flexibility, citing crypto’s potential to reduce economic friction and enhance liquidity. He proposed an “innovation exemption” to encourage U.S. leadership in digital assets. In a major shift, the SEC withdrew 14 crypto-related rulemakings introduced under former Chairman Gary Gensler, including efforts to regulate DeFi platforms and amend the Custody Rule. The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance clarified that certain staking activities, like self-staking and custodial staking through qualified third parties, do not constitute securities offerings and require no registration, as they involve administrative, not managerial, actions. Jamie Selway was appointed Director of Trading and Markets, bringing deep experience in fintech and market structure. At his nomination hearing, CFTC Chairman-nominee Brian Quintenz argued that the agency is best positioned to oversee digital assets and pledged a balanced approach to innovation and consumer protection.The Federal Reserve eliminated "reputational risk" from its bank supervision considerations, following accusations that this policy led to the debanking of crypto-related entities. The FHFA, under Director Bill Pulte, directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin factoring in crypto holdings, if held on U.S.-regulated exchanges, into mortgage applications.

  • States: The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) approved MoonPay for a BitLicense and Money Transmitter License. Texas created the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, making it the first state to authorize investing public funds in Bitcoin. Arizona passed a bill to establish a digital asset reserve fund using proceeds from criminal cases, though final enactment is uncertain due to the governor’s crypto skepticism. Wyoming is preparing to launch its Wyoming Stable Token (WYST) by August 2025, backed by U.S. Treasuries. In contrast, Connecticut passed a bill prohibiting state and local governments from accepting or using crypto for payments.

Portfolio Company Updates

  • Alfred: Featured by Circle as a key part of Circle’s Payment Network.

  • Circuit: Congratulations to Circuit on being the only crypto team selected for Lloyd's of London's 10-week Insurtech accelerator.

  • Etherfuse: Brought tokenized sovereign bonds for Mexico to the Base network.

  • Predicate: Released a whitepaper outlining a Uniswap V4 hook framework powered by Predicate for regulated institutions to deploy onchain liquidity pools on the Uniswap protocol. These capabilities were also covered by reporting in Blockworks.

  • RWA.xyz: Produced a research report with Gauntlet on the state of onchain RWA, finding that RWA tokenization has surged from $5B in 2022 to over $24B by mid-2025, driven by institutional adoption, regulatory tailwinds, and DeFi integration. Private credit leads the charge, and new infrastructure like RWA oracles is laying the groundwork for further trillion-dollar scale expansion.

  • Superstate: Announced that Upexi intends to tokenize its SEC-registered shares on-chain via Opening Bell, Superstate’s on-chain issuance platform. Launched on Plume.

  • SquidRouter: Announced support for the Peaq network.

What We’re Reading

We caught up on a lot of reading this past month, including some items that were from earlier in the year, but still worth noting in case you missed them as well.