The Briefing Memo

July 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.

Company Updates

• Portfolio company Flyra has dropped FlyraOS, which it terms “the operating system for global money.” Glad they’ve moved out of stealth; we had a chance to catch up with founder Oneal Bhambani recently, who got to show us what he’s been building with a live demo. Their proprietary, customizable ledger unifies all layers of the stablecoin stack, including cards, payments, lending, and compliance. Rock on, Oneal! 

• RWA.xyz has partnered with Robinhood to verify and report the data on the Robinhood Chain.

• Superstate’s assets are headed to Uniswap, following its new permissioned pools standard, which will allow tokenized equities and other regulated instruments to trade on AMMs. 

• Squid has completed its token sale, with $27mm committed, 11.9x oversubscribed. Big congrats!

Dept. Updates

Nothing like being stablecoin famous! We’re very pleased to report that our intrepid leader, Matt, has landed a place on Stablecon’s most influential list of Investors and Capital allocators. Pretty cool to get named alongside heavy hitters from places like Pantera and a16z. Soon to be a household name.

Stablecon has also named two portco founders, Oneal from Flyra (see above) and Milind Sanghavi of XWeave, as rising influencers in their respective (North America and Asia/Pacific) regions. We’re very proud of their accomplishments. 

Only personal travel to report this month, with Matt in Italy and Jon in Korea (yes, South; why do people ask?) Fall tour dates to be announced. 

Regulatory Developments

Wither CLARITY? We’ve been hoping with and against hope for nearly a year since the House passed the bill and sent it to the senior chamber, where it’s stalled completely. Earlier this year, Polymarket had the chances of its passing in 2026 up to 75%, but even with some compromises, we’re down below 40% as of this writing. Senate Majority Leader Thune has tabled moving it forward until after the August recess, when Congress will come back and have quite a bit of other things on its plate. Some have also theorized that it could pass in the lame duck session after the midterms, but that seems wishful thinking. Sounds pretty dire.

Before riding off into the sunset, Commissioner Peirce gave her views on vaults and their potential intersection with securities laws. Intuitively, what she said makes sense: If the curator is making discretionary decisions, like allocating assets and choosing yield strategies, these may be securities offerings or investment companies, and the curator may be an investment advisor.

Finally, a Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court issued a decision in the Celsius case about the value of avoided transfers of digital assets. (Sorry, having some PTSD here - I spent years reading fraudulent transfer decisions while cutting my teeth as a bankruptcy lawyer.) The court ruled that for assets that were transferred and whose values fell before filing for protection under Title 11, the plaintiff can recover the value at time of transfer. For assets whose values rose after transfer, or those that the debtor still held on the petition date, the plaintiff gets the petition date value. So if the debtor sold BTC at $20k and was worth $100k at filing, the plaintiff gets $100k. I view this as the right result: The debtor was a bad guy and plaintiff shouldn’t suffer for it. This is a court of equity, after all.

News

The DTCC is fully in the tokenization game now, completing the largest tokenization production initiative ever. Well, I’d hope it’s the biggest, as it settles nearly $5 quadrillion in trades a year and custodies $114 trillion in securities. All the big players took part, including Goldman, BNY, Citadel, JPM, and Vanguard. 

Behemoth asset manager BlackRock has outlined its vision for the crypto-TradFi convergence. In short, investors won’t need to leave digital wallets to be able to invest in crypto, equities, and the rest. BlackRock expects to generate $500mm in digital assets revenues by 2030. Coupled with the DTCC announcement, those sound pretty achievable..

Another piece of the puzzle: Securitize and Cantor Fitzgerald have announced an agreement that would allow companies to conduct IPOs and follow-ons entirely on the blockchain. They tout efficiency, transparency, and a global onchain market base as reasons why you and your loved ones should get on board.

Shout out to friend of the fund Cross River Bank, who’s announced a partnership with X (nee Twitter). Cross River will provide the infra backbone for X’s offering yield-bearing accounts, cards, and payment capabilities integrated with the social media platform, the first such platform to have this available for its users.

Visa launched a platform   to allow banks and fintechs to use stables within their existing treasury and payment workflows. Big deal because Visa’s network extends to 15,000 financial institutions and 200mm merchants. 

Morgan Stanley is rolling out crypto trading for eTrade customers, who will be able to get into BTC, ETH, and SOL spot trading. Still quite incredible to see how the former bulwarks against crypto are coming around. We still recall when PayPal pulled this off a few years ago, which sparked BTC’s rally by 100% in a few months. Guessing that’s not happening now, but hey.

Speaking of PayPal, there’s a bid on the table led by Stripe to acquire it for $53bn. Speculation is that it’s for the distribution. It’s all distribution these days.

Lots of OCC chartering news this month. Circle got itself an OCC charter, which is also what it’s all about these days. Circle is now able to offer fiduciary custody of digital assets and could bring home from other banks its reserve custody of the USDC backing assets. For those playing at home, Circle does still have its Bitlicense; some others have surrendered their DFS charters, but Circle’s hanging on to their license. Morgan Stanely has also secured a charter, to facilitate digital asset trading, client staking, and to act as a collateral administrator. And then a curveball, but ok: Sony (yes, those guys that make your TV) has gotten conditional approval for its own OCC charter. Why? To issue and manage a USD-pegged stablecoin so users can pay Sony for things like games and movies. We keep telling people, if you want an OCC charter ever, apply now. Don’t think you’ll find a friendlier regulatory posture than in the next couple years.

When you think of major insurance companies, other than cute mascots, what comes to mind? “Conservative” is what I’d bet a lot of people say. So when one of them tokenizes assets so they can trade in DeFi protocols, how does that make you feel? New York Life has done just that with the launch of a tokenized bond portfolio. Snoopy approves.

Ok, it’s not just us. A survey of North American financial institutions reveals that 84% of them are making tokenization a priority, with 80% believing tokenized MMFs and mutual funds will play a meaningful role within five years. Many are planning to increase investment in the space by 26-50% over the next two years. Heartening, to say the least.

Listens and Reads

Stablecoins, how do they work? If you want a good deep dive, check out this piece. In sum and substance, stablecoins significantly reduce friction in cross-border payments and exchange transactions by enabling 24/7 dollar-denominated settlement in minutes rather than days. However, this model introduces new risks, including issuer concentration, liquidity bottlenecks during stress events, network congestion, and fragmented international regulatory frameworks. To manage these vulnerabilities, financial institutions are adopting multi-stablecoin strategies, maintaining short exposure windows, and preparing for future developments like tokenized bank deposits. Good read.

Agentic AI is happening, and crypto is coming along to play. This piece by Sandy Kaul at Franklin Templeton lays it out. In part it’s due to legacy banking rails being too slow. Bots are going to use stables instead, which gives you instant, verifiable settlement. Enjoy.

Coinbase is out there saying stables might take over fiat volumes in five years. Sure, why not.

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.