The Briefing Memo

January 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.

Portfolio Updates

Superstate announced a $82.5mm Series B raise led by Bain Capital. The Venture Dept. invested in Superstate’s prior round, so we’re thrilled, obviously. Superstate has launched Opening Bell, which allows public companies to tokenize securities (see NYSE news below). Robert Leshner knows that damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

Alfred announced a $15M Series A raise led by F-Prime, Brevan Howard, and White Star. When we invested in Alfred they were quietly building the most reliable fiat-to-stablecoin infrastructure in Latin America. Thy are now a dominant player. Congrats to founders Diego Yanez, Matias Plano, and the entire team.

And that’s not all! A third portfolio company, Multiliquid, announced their inaugural fundraise, with funding from Metalayer Ventures, Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, and Generative Ventures. Read a little more about it from our recent blog post on the subject. 

One of the first companies we invested in, Circuit, announced its collab with Lloyd’s of London. Those Lloyd’s policyholders that integrate Circuit will receive a 15% discount on their premiums. Lose your keys? Counterparty went poof? Circuit built an undo button for those potentialities. Feels like the discount should be higher. 

And one more big move we’d like to share: Etherfuse getting together with South Korean giant Shinhan Securities to support the expansion and institutional distribution of tokenized sovereign debt in Korea and across Asia. South Korea is a very crypto-forward country, with over 30% of the population investing in digital assets. 

Dept. Updates

Jon held an audience enrapt (oh they were so riveted) at a recent Stablecon Salon in Manhattan. Alongside Aadil Mamujee from Bridge (our first investment) and Luca Cosentino from Cross River Bank (one of our favorite partners). Jon discussed how corporates operate, make payments, and manage liquidity using stables. Short answer: innumerable. 

Matt was recently quoted in a PitchBook piece on crypto companies breaking through the IPO ceiling in 2025 and why momentum could carry into 2026. He shared perspectives on what has finally shifted in public-market readiness and what still separates durable issuers from short-lived hype.

If you want to see Matt, live and in person, he’s speaking at HBS on January 31st at the Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference and then at the Lynx Fintech Summit 2026 on February 5th:

Regulatory Developments

Well, we were hoping for a year-end market structure act, but you don’t always get what you want. There have been delays and distractions (and lots of public griping about what’s in the competing bills and what’s not. Can’t we all just get along (and get some real certainty)?

That said, in a speech on January 29, SEC Chair Atkins got to the crux of the matter: the regulatory maze across agencies has been “not a safeguard for investors so much as a source of confusion….” Instead, he provides the grand vision of “[w]orking together with common purpose, we can deliver clearer guidance, consistent standards, and a regulatory framework that reflects how markets actually function instead of how they used to.” Correct. CFTC Chair Mike Selig made his first public remarks as chair, and he didn’t disappoint, highlighting the agency’s deep innovation tradition, a commitment to ensuring digital commodities are not securities, and a vision for modernizing rules around expanding eligible tokenized collateral, exemptions for software users and developers, among a host of other applaud-worthy matters. Watch here:

Beyond stump speeches, the SEC issued its Statement on Tokenized Securities. The Statement discussed the fundamentals, including, most importantly, that there is no difference between traditional and crypto ledgers, other than the latter being on blockchain. This simple clarification is something banks across the Street have been seeking from the SEC for years. Thanks. The SEC also threw a wet blanket on third-party tokenized securities, citing concerns over the rights a holder may have, including in the bankruptcy context. Consult your favorite neighborhood SEC attorney if you’re building in here, as terms and conditions apply. Also, I’d like to start a petition to get “crypto asset” modernized to “cryptoasset.” (Well, at least they dropped the hyphen. My god.)

News

ICE (no, the other ICE) announced the NYSE will move the storied institution one step further into the future, developing a 24/7 on-chain trading and settlement system. Some of us around here are just getting through Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography and think Alexander would approve of august, robust machineries and ethereal coin, ever driving the lusty engine of commerce. 

Internationally, Japan is starting to warm to crypto. Its Finance Minister stated her strong support for integrating digital assets into traditional financial markets, citing US leadership on the topic. She also expressed that crypto can serve as a hedge against inflation, as well as the rising demand among Japanese investors for exposure. She called 2026 the “digital year.” Works for us. Ripple’s UK arm just scored FCA approval of its Electronic Money Institution license and crypto registration, giving it a fully regulated runway to scale crypto-enabled cross-border payments for institutional clients under the UK’s evolving digital-asset regime. 

Barclays has made a significant investment in purchasing stablecoin clearing platform Ubyx. Quick question: has any major bank not made an investment in stables yet? Ex-China (which maybe we shouldn’t count), seems like the majors are digging in (or been diggin'g in). This makes perfect sense to us, and likely is in no small measure due to rising demand from banks’ clients. According to this analysis, stablecoin mentions on third quarter 2025 earnings calls were up 8,000% YoY. Picturing bankers’ email boxes filling up with client emails demanding stablecoin offerings warms our hearts. 

More banks are bringing tokenized deposits online, including BNY. In our view, this is an important step that coincides with emerging regulatory certainty to unlock real-time margin calls, instantaneous collateral movement, with future settlement against tokenized securities and other digital assets.

We’d also be remiss to not discuss the Kontigo news coming out of Venezuela. Kontigo, a crypto-native neobank that became a critical USD and stablecoin access point for Venezuelan users, recently faced a double bind familiar to anyone operating at the edge of sanctions, banking, and emerging-market demand: U.S. banking access disruptions tied to compliance risk, followed shortly by a security incident that resulted in the loss of roughly $340k in USDC across user accounts. The company has committed to full reimbursement, but the episode is a stark reminder that regulation and compliance are still a necessity and founders are wise to lean in and treat it as a competitive advantage.

Listens and Reads

A couple podcasts worth your while. First, a conversation between Citi’s global head for treasury payments and the CEO of PYMNTS, where they get into adoption, integration, and the future of stablecoins. As we said above, this is being driven by client demand for always-on, frictionless movement of value globally; we’re at a monumental inflection point. The other should be right up our readers alleys, Inside Global Finance 2030: Tokenization, ISO 20022, Stablecoins & Digital Policy. After laying out the history of how we got here (technologically, adoption growth, regulatory and compliance changes), the panel gets into a deep dive of where those things are headed.

Wharton dropped the Stablecoin Toolkit, with help from Predicate founder Nikhil Raghuveera. The report positions stablecoins as a crucial bridge between traditional finance and digital assets, offering faster, more efficient, and programmable money that could reshape payments and other financial services while regulatory clarity drives institutional uptake. It provides a detailed taxonomy of stablecoins, covering custodial, decentralized, and hybrid mechanisms, and maps their roles across liquidity, payments, store-of-value, credit, and programmable commerce use cases. Finally, the toolkit stresses that understanding the full stablecoin ecosystem is essential for both market players and policy-makers as legal regimes evolve worldwide. Enjoy.

DCG’s Yuma is out with a report on Bittensor subnets. The report argues that Bittensor subnet tokens should be valued as financial assets that replace specific operational expenses, not as speculative crypto instruments. It presents a framework that ties a subnet token’s fundamental value to the real-world cost of the work it incentivizes, using forecasts of equivalent internal OpEx, predefined emission schedules, and discounted cash flow analysis to estimate token prices and investor returns over time.  

And something to chew on. OFAC announced a settlement with Exodus Movement, which develops non-custodial wallets. OFAC alleged Exodus provided customer service support to help 254 Iranians get access to digital exchanges. The argument has always been, I’m not liable because all I did was create neutral software.  Let’s all keep in mind that maybe you should stick to your knitting (or at least check the IP addresses). 

And finally, we’d like to wish you all a very belated Happy 2026. It’s our year.

^{_{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.}}