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The Briefing Memo

April 2026 - If you’re new here, welcome to The Briefing Memo, which features the latest insights and updates from The Venture Dept., the friendly former regulators on the cap table. If this newsletter has been forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

Programming note: Matt and Jon will be traveling to Miami for Consensus, Amsterdam for EMEA26 Stablecon (come to Jon’s panel on local stablecoins with founders Milind Sanghavi (XWeave), Oneal Bhambani (Flyra), and Dave Taylor (Etherfuse)), and Milan for ETHMilan 2026. Racking up those miles.

Company Updates

Another month, another TVD portco showing up in the pages of Fortune, this time featuring Valinor’s Connor Dougherty and Lily Yarborough: 

Valinor is bringing institutional credit onchain, becoming the “the translation agent between” credit and crypto companies, according to friend-of-the-fund Sean Judge of Castle Island Ventures. In addition to TVD and Castle Island, Susquehanna, Maven 11, and the Terrawulf founders were part of the Valinor seed round. For those of you wondering, Valinor is straight outta Tolkien. Valinor is known as the Undying Lands, a realm of immortality and utter bliss. There, everyone takes stablecoins.

We have deep conviction in Connor and Lily. We direct you to our recent post, Why we invested in Valinor.

Superstate has turned on FundOS, designed to let traditional asset managers put private funds, mutual funds, and ETFs onchain without rebuilding their existing infrastructure. It abstracts away messy plumbing while enabling crypto-native features like real-time settlement, 24/7 subscriptions, and stablecoin flows. The broader pitch is that tokenization isn’t a science project anymore: with proven infrastructure already managing $1B+ in assets, 

Also, Superstate also brought to Solana tokenized Galaxy shares, the first NASDAQ-listed public equity to be tokenized directly on a major public chain. Tokenized equities are now coming available in the DeFi world, which is certainly the direction of travel.

Also also, Superstate has brought Invesco to bear to tokenize its tokenized Treasury fund, USTB, which already has nearly $1B in AUM. Invesco will manage the portfolio, which retains the same infrastructure Superstate has built, but just under new management.

Predicate has launched its Asset Compliance product, automated, institutional-ready compliance controls for RWAs and stablecoins. As we can tell you, compliance solutions are sorely needed for what’s next. Glad Predicate is helping lead the way. 

Predicate founder Nikhil Rahuveera took to the EY Global Blockchain Summit to tell the audience about programmable policy’s ability to make more finely-tuned compliance enforcement onchain. 

Dept. Updates

Matt and Jon continued their travels, this time to DC, meeting with folks who are building and advising in the space. Among others, The Venture Dept. spent some time with government colleagues who are interested in how stablecoins are changing the world and impacting the dollar. We plan on being down to the District on a semi-regular basis, so let us know if you’d like to sit around and chat. Or go to a Nationals game!

Regulatory Developments

The SEC dropped guidance that opens the door to DeFi. If you’re providing front-ends and wallets, and not custody, advice, or execution, the SEC will give you a pass. For a deep analysis, check out this piece from friend-of-the-fund Neel Maitra at Dechert. As an aside, we heard from a good source that the SEC should issue by May 8 the innovation exemption we’ve been expecting.

This is all good, but can we get some legislation around this, too? Polymarket has it at 46% at present, down from 68% on April 11 and 82% on February 19. Our DC insider pals  think the bill has a better shot than the market reflects, but it’s got to be before Congress goes to summer camp. Otherwise, we’re in the heat of midterms races and all bets are off. If the Dems end up winning the House (and maybe even the Senate (53% on Polymarket), chances drop significantly; not because the Blue team abhors crypto like they once did, but that it’s unlikely to be a major priority. C’mon, Gillibrand! Tell them what time it is!

The SEC is preparing to issue its crypto assets regulatory framework. This would, among other things, provide a startup exemption and to shield some tokens from being deemed securities once the team’s project steps away from certain defined management duties. 

The White House dropped a report (with way too much math for those of us still recovering from undergrad game theory work (e.g., 𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑎 = 𝛼𝛼𝑎𝑎(1 + 𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑎)𝜎𝜎−1 𝛷𝛷 , 𝛷𝛷 ≡ 𝛼𝛼𝐷𝐷(1 + 𝑖𝑖𝐷𝐷)𝜎𝜎−1 + 𝛼𝛼𝑆𝑆(1 + 𝑦𝑦)𝜎𝜎−1) (my god)) on the Effects of Stablecoin Yield Prohibition on Bank Lending. The sum and substance: “a yield prohibition would do very little to protect bank lending, while forgoing the consumer benefits of competitive returns on stablecoin holdings.” It’s something we’ve been shouting into the void about for quite some time, but didn’t math it up. Our bad.

The ABA pushed back on the report, saying the White House answered the wrong question. Instead of querying whether yield prohibition would hurt banks, the WH should instead study what happens if yield payments are permitted and the attendant effects on deposit flight. The ABA says this would put enormous pressure on community banks. That seems possible, but, as we’ve discussed, the tech is coming for banks that don’t hurry up and adopt ways to take advantage of it, and it seems community banks will be late to the party regardless. Those banks that do move forward and change will survive; those who don’t, won’t.

FinCEN and OFAC jointly issued proposed rulemaking around GENIUS, which “encourages innovation in payment stablecoins while providing an appropriately tailored regime to mitigate potential illicit finance risks.” The proposed rules would treat stablecoin issuers as financial institutions for BSA purposes and impose money-laundering obligations on them. 

The FDIC has come out with its own proposed GENIUS rulemaking, which would set standards for stablecoin issuers, including reserve requirements, custodial and safekeeping requirements, and provides that tokenized deposits would be subject to deposit insurance. Good stuff.

Off in South Korea, a proposal to regulate digital assets is being pushed forward in the legislature, pointing to GENIUS, Japan’s Payment Services Act, and MiCA as showing global regulatory development. The bill would create a taxonomy, licensing and regulatory frameworks, and investor protection. 

News

The NYSE aggressively reinventing itself around crypto and blockchain, betting that digital assets will underpin the next generation of markets. It details a multibillion-dollar push by its parent ICE, including investments in crypto firms, plans for 24/7 tokenized securities trading, and partnerships to enable instant settlement and stablecoin-based transactions. This reflects a broader, accelerating Wall Street shift toward digital assets driven by regulatory tailwinds and investor demand. 

The would-be next Fed Chair is into it. His investment disclosures reflect nominee Kevin Warsh has made 30 investments in the crypto space, including checks into Compound, dydX, Polychain, Lightning Network, and Solana, among others. He’s also been an advisor to Bitwise. Sounds like our kind of guy.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley have launched their own crypto ETFs. Not sure I agree with the “shocked” reaction about Goldman, who’s been deep in crypto for many years, but it’s good to see they’re feeling bullish. Oh, and Schwab is going to let its customers spot trade crypto. Even serial crypto antagonist Jamie Dimon has figured out digital is the future, saying legacy financial rails are “slow and costly,” and recognizing JPM better step on it.

Coinbase has secured a conditional federal charter from the OCC. Everyone who’s anyone seems to be going down this route; one commenter noted there have been 11 charter filings in the last 83 days. Jonathan Gould is a busy man.

Listens and Reads

SEC Chair Atkins and Commissioners Uyueda and Peirce sat down for the SEC’s first-ever podcast. It’s relatively high-level, but, as you can imagine, the regulators-cum-podcasters touch on Project Crypto and the importance of issuing regulations that allow for innovation in the good ol’ US of A. 

Speaking of podcasts, friend-of-the-fund Justin Friedman chatted with Rain founder and CEO Farooq Malik about building compliant, institutional-grade rails connecting stablecoins with TradFi. 

Chainalysis has a new post on the future of payments (spoiler: Through stables). They predict stablecoin volumes could by 2035 reach $1.5 quadrillion. (Is there a shorthand for that yet? Like B for billions and T for trillions? Q would follow that scheme, but how many people would know what that means? Let’s find out.)

Beyond extrapolating from recent growth trends (volumes are up 133%, compound, since 2023), the post says this will be driven by the massive wealth transfer from Boomers to their chain-savvy descendants and explosive merchant acceptance growth. My take is that being onchain savvy will be less important than folks might think as the still-clunky and complex onchain systems become abstracted away. It seems like moving away from traditional rails and to instant settlement of RWAs (especially stocks and bonds) will get us to and past the $1.5Q.

Here’s a great piece on ripping and replacing Eurodollars. A changeover to stablecoins would remove the “free-riding problem where the United States bears the costs and risks of the global dollar system while foreign institutions and governments capture the benefits.” Among other things, the authors suggest creating a backstop architecture that makes stables more attractive, pushing for stablecoins to be the settlement instrument, and align fee payouts to compete with interest-bearing Eurodollar accounts. Recognizing we’ve reached a powerful inflection point, the piece says the U.S. should “control[] the rails on which the world’s savings move [and] will shape the next century of international finance.” 

Circle’s Jeremy Allaire is touting yuan-backed stablecoins as a “tremendous opportunity” to make international payments easier as digital money starts to eat into traditional rails. China’s thinking about it. Everyone’s thinking about it.

But how do we make sure the new system runs smoothly? This MIT paper delves into the three areas it identifies as where the vulnerabilities lie: 1, the stablecoin issuer’s financial health and the markets for the tokens’ backing assets; 2, governance around issuance and transfer; and 3, the regulatory frameworks around them. Among other conclusions, the authors find that GENIUS is nice, but there are open issues around liquidity support, capital buffers, and redemption design. So, more rules? Always, more rules.

^Disclaimer

^{The information in this newsletter is provided solely for general informational purposes and reflects the author’s personal views at the time of publication. Nothing herein should be construed as investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to engage in any transaction or strategy. Readers should consult their own professional advisors before making any financial, legal, or other decisions. All information is provided “as is,” without any representation or warranty of any kind.}

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