CEO Notes
the first on-chain M&A
Arizona is lending its Bitcoin
Europe's $2.3T manager went on-chain
Morgan Stanley is building a full-stack crypto bank
who owns the agent economy?
On March 18, 2026, Stripe and Tempo co-released the Machine Payments Protocol, an open specification for machine-to-machine payments.
Wall Street just put stocks on a blockchain
On March 18, the SEC approved Nasdaq to trade and settle U.S. equities as blockchain tokens.
the SEC sorts its tokens
Hey, it’s Marc, For the first time ever in their combined 183 years of existence, the SEC and CFTC published a joint document agreeing on what crypto actually is. They named 16 specific tokens as commodities. They said staking isn't a security. And they formally acknowledged that a security can stop being a security. That last part is the one that changes everything. [RELEASE] The Signal: Most crypto tokens aren’t securities by default, and their regulatory status depends on how they’re used
Mastercard acquired BVNK for $1.8B
Florida's stablecoin bill
Hey, it’s Marc, JPMorgan closed Trump’s accounts. Congress froze on crypto regulation. Whereas, Florida just built the first state-level stablecoin regulatory system in America. And it did it unanimously. In one legislative sprint, the state passed a stablecoin issuance framework, authorized a potential $24B+ sovereign digital asset allocation, and launched a pilot to accept crypto for state taxes. It’s a live fork of the U.S. financial system. [RELEASE] 👉PRO: Download the PDF below Subscr
NYSE's parent just bought 120M crypto users
4.5% broke Congress
Hey, it’s Marc, The CLARITY Act missed its March 1 deadline because banks and crypto can't agree on one number: 4.5%. That's the yield Coinbase pays on USDC. Your bank pays 0.01%. A Treasury study says $6.6 trillion in deposits are at risk. The most important crypto bill in U.S. history is stuck, with four months before the midterms freeze everything. [RELEASE] Let’s unpack. 👉PRO: Download the PDF below Subscribe now What happened The CLARITY Act passed the House in July 2025 with bipa
Nasdaq ate crypto and called it an upgrade
Hey, it’s Marc, Crypto promised to kill the middleman. The middleman just hired crypto instead. Nasdaq and Kraken are turning every Nasdaq-listed stock into a blockchain token, same CUSIP, same rules, just faster. Through Kraken’s xStocks, NASDAQ has access to 68% of the tokenized equities market with $25B+ in transaction volume across 85,000 unique holders. [RELEASE] The stock market is about to run 24/7. Let’s unpack. 👉PRO: Download the PDF below Subscribe nowHe ran the NYSE, now he's
The first crypto firm on Fedwire
BNP Paribas called it an 'experiment'
Hey, it’s Marc, Name one major institution that launched tokenized funds on a private blockchain and stayed there. You can’t. BlackRock moved to Ethereum. Franklin Templeton moved to Ethereum. JPMorgan moved to Ethereum. Last week, BNP Paribas joined them as the first and largest European bank. And they went further. [RELEASE] Let’s unpack. 👉PRO: Download the PDF at the bottom Download Subscribe now What happened On February 19, 2026, BNP Paribas Asset Management issued a tokenized sha
Wall Street's weekend just died
Santander let a bot spend real money
Hey, it’s Marc, I keep asking bank executives the same question: when does an AI agent make its first real purchase inside your system? On March 2, Santander answered it. An AI agent completed a live, end-to-end payment on real rails, no human at checkout. The $5 trillion checkout just got its first non-human customer. [RELEASE] Let’s unpack. Subscribe now 👉PRO: Download the PDF at the bottom Download Subscribe now What happened Santander and Mastercard executed Europe’s first live AI
Fidelity goes on-chain
Fidelity doesn't do crypto. It manages $6.8 trillion. So when the 79-year-old asset manager launched its own stablecoin on January 28, the game fundamentally changed. On January 28, 2026, the second-largest asset manager in America launched FIDD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin that Fidelity issues, distributes, and custodies in-house. [PRESS RELEASE]. For the first time, a titan with a national trust bank charter, the highest tier of federal oversight, is offering 24/7 dollar settlement on Ethereu
USDC prints $2.7B. Coinbase keeps 60%
Meta's stablecoin comeback with Stripe
In 2021, U.S. regulators killed Facebook’s Diem stablecoin project with a phone call. No law, no court order, just the Fed’s General Counsel Mark Van Der Weide dialling Diem’s CEO Stuart Leve and its banking partners with a message that landed like a cease-and-desist. Fast forward four years: Meta is back. But they aren’t minting a coin this time. Instead, they are renting Stripe’s stablecoin plumbing to turn WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook into a 3B user global settlement layer. And, this is
Apollo bought 9% of a DeFi protocol
Wall Street went from dismissing DeFi to integrating DeFi for tokenized funds to acquiring governance stakes. Morpho Association announced a cooperation agreement with Apollo Global Management affiliates. The deal: Apollo may acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens, over the next four years. This came just 48 hours after BlackRock listed its $2.1B BUIDL fund on Uniswap and purchased UNI governance tokens. [RELEASE] This didn't happen overnight. The shift from dismissing DeFi to governing it tel
Stripe doesn’t need bank
Hey, it’s Marc! For over 15 years, Stripe processed payments. It needed banks to hold the money. It needed card networks to move it. It needed partners for everything. That just changed. Now, Stripe owns a bank. Kind of. On February 17, 2026, the OCC conditionally approved Bridge, Stripe’s $1.1 billion stablecoin acquisition, for a national trust bank charter. [RELEASE] 👉PRO: Download the PDF at the bottom Subscribe now What happened The OCC greenlit a national trust bank charter1 for
From 100% to 2%
You know what’s more powerful than a 1,000-page regulation? A two-page FAQ. On February 19, the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets quietly dropped guidance that slashes the capital charge on stablecoins from 100% to 2% for broker-dealers. That’s the same haircut as money market funds. This makes stablecoins near-cash working capital and it might be the single most important regulatory shift for Wall Street in 2026. [RELEASE] [FAQs] 👉PRO: Download the PDF at the bottom 👉Need it simple? Re
The first nation to run on USDC
BlackRock just plugged into DeFi
Citi just picked Solana over Ethereum
Coinbase took Epstein's $3M in 2014
3.5 million pages of DOJ documents confirm what no compliance officer flagged in 2014: a convicted sex offender was funding Bitcoin’s development pipeline. The 2026 Tranche of Epstein files suggests that the roadmap of Bitcoin was a commercial strategy financed by Jeffrey Epstein. But the story is different and a mix of fact, rumors, interpretations and opinions. Let’s unpack. 👉PRO: PDF at the bottom The Consensus Miami 2026 Global Digital Asset Adoption Index Report by CoinDesk Data just d
Wall Street's new darling
On Monday, Citadel Securities, the DTCC, the New York Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, ARK Invest, and Tether backed a single Layer 1 called Zero. These aren’t institutions “exploring” blockchain. They’re the operating system of global capital and they just placed a bet on replacing their own plumbing. This is the most consequential infrastructure announcement in digital assets this year. Here’s why. [RELEASE] 👉PRO: PDF at the bottom Subscribe nowDTCC, Goldman, Citadel pick Canton: Why Wall Str
Tether just put on a suit
The U.S. crypto battlefield
Hey, it’s Marc & 51 team, Jamie Dimon interrupted Brian Armstrong’s coffee with Tony Blair at Davos. The JPMorgan CEO got in Armstrong’s face and told him he was “full of sh*t” for claiming banks were sabotaging crypto legislation. While CEOs traded insults in Switzerland, SEC Chair Atkins is building the regulatory framework: the GENIUS Act is live. Project Crypto just formalized SEC-CFTC coordination. DTCC launched its tokenisation pilot. OCC greenlit five crypto-focused national trust banks
Why crypto broke
Hey, it’s Marc & 51 team, For 18 months, the crypto pitch to allocators was simple: ETFs brought in real money, regulation was coming, and Bitcoin had decoupled from degen retail. Mature asset class. Uncorrelated store of value. Digital gold. Then three pipes burst at the same time: the U.S. Treasury sucked $200B out of bank reserves, Japan ended 30 years of free-money leverage, and AI’s hype cycle suddenly became a risk event, and Bitcoin did what “digital gold” isn’t supposed to do: it crash
Hong Kong built the rails. Will the trains arrive?
Buy Bitcoin. Then What?
Crypto's $2.1B Custody IPO
Hey, it’s Marc, Crypto custody has come a long way from scribbled seed phrases and anonymous exchanges. Today, it’s a multi‑billion‑dollar institutional industry led by players like BitGo, which now safeguards over $100 billion in digital assets. BitGo just accomplished what few thought possible on Wall Street: becoming a $2.1 billion federally chartered custody bank and now, with its $212.8 million IPO last week, it’s taking crypto infrastructure into the institutional era. This isn’t just a
SWIFT’s vampire attack on crypto
What Davos really said about crypto
The house model is dying
The end of the closing bell
Yesterday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) dismantled Wall Street’s most long-boundary: market hours. For 232 years, equity markets have operated under a simple constraint. Trading happens between 9:30am and 4:00pm ET, Monday through Friday. That created an entire ecosystem: futures markets for after-hours risk, “gap” strategies betting on weekend news accumulation, and a global pecking order forcing Asia to wake up at 2am to trade U.S. stocks. But on January 19, 2026, Intercontinental Exch
BNY Mellon rewrote how money moves
Polygon’s $250M payment pivot
China Pays Yield. America Bans It.
We’re 72 hours from a Senate vote that could reshape crypto.
Morgan Stanley enters crypto issuance
Real-estate enters prediction markets
The United States just seized 3% of Bitcoin
[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers]
Stripe’s 1.5% tax on the old world
[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers; PDF at the bottom]
The GENIUS Act’s first victims
Traditional bank moats
DTCC, Goldman, Citadel pick Canton: Why Wall Street chose a private blockchain
Coinbase is no longer a crypto exchange
Hey, it’s Marc. Stop calling Coinbase a crypto exchange. As of yesterday, that label is dead. At its System Update event, Coinbase did not launch features. It dismantled categories. Stocks, derivatives, prediction markets, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets were all pulled into a single on-chain environment, settled on Base, collateralized by USDC, and distributed through one wallet. [MORE] Let’s unpack. (full PDF at the bottom) Get your brand in front of 100k+ decision makers in d
SEC & DTCC: the $100 trillion green light
[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers; PDF at the bottom]
How the SEC is rewriting capital markets
[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers; PDF at the bottom]
Re-Engineering of US Derivatives Markets
[Our daily CEO briefing for PRO readers; PDF at the bottom]