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Capital Markets

Every Crypto Coin Show story tagged Capital Markets, newest first, alongside the guides and interviews that give it context.

Guide: How to read a token’s supplyGuide: How do prediction markets work? Polymarket,Newsletter
From the interview archive
HIFI secures $37M Series A to expand tokenized money settlement tools
Fundraising

HIFI secures $37M Series A to expand tokenized money settlement tools

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Editor's ChoiceCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 25, 2026·3 min read

HIFI, a New York stablecoin infrastructure firm, has raised a $37 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital to build out licensing, card payouts and capital markets tooling for tokenized money. The round lands as HIFI’s client roster already includes Sumitomo, Dapper and Arival Bank, and as the company sits inside two of the most closely watched institutional tokenization pilots run by DTCC and Tradeweb.

  • HIFI’s platform moves more than $7 billion a year, with usage among existing customers up more than fourfold in six months.
  • A Form D filed with the SEC on September 3 shows $21.8 million of a $27.3 million equity offering sold to 24 investors since a first sale on August 19.
  • HIFI joined DTCC’s July 15 production trades alongside BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Nasdaq, ahead of an October launch of DTCC’s tokenization service.
  • $37M Series A size versus the $27.3M SEC offering already partly sold
  • $7B annual settlement volume against fourfold customer growth in six months
  • $307B total stablecoin supply industry-wide, per Blockworks data

HIFI said Thursday that Left Lane Capital led the $37 million Series A, with Matthew Miller, the firm’s managing partner, joining HIFI’s board. The company said the capital will fund additional regulatory licenses, a larger team in New York and abroad, and an expansion from payments into cards and capital markets.

HIFI’s Platform Moves $7 Billion a Year as Usage Quadruples

HIFI said its platform now processes more than $7 billion annually, with usage among existing customers growing more than fourfold over the past six months. Companies building on the infrastructure have onboarded over 10,000 businesses and 200,000 individuals, with payouts reaching 87 countries.

Sumitomo is rebuilding its cash management and trading operations on the platform. Dapper is building digital marketplaces on it, while Arival Bank runs stablecoin payments through the system.

The Form D that HIFI Bridge, Inc. filed with the SEC on September 3 discloses a $27.3 million equity offering, of which $21.8 million has sold to 24 investors since a first sale on August 19. That filing runs alongside, not in place of, the $37 million Series A, giving HIFI two active capital tracks heading into its licensing push.

DTCC’s July 15 Trades Put HIFI Beside BlackRock and Goldman Sachs

DTCC ran production trades with tokenized, DTC-held securities on July 15 across more than 30 firms, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Nasdaq, covering collateral pledges, securities lending and Treasury and repo settlement ahead of an October launch of its full tokenization service.

HIFI said it took part in the tokenized repo pilot and also supported a live tokenized repo trade on Tradeweb between DRW and Marex, settled on Canton with USDCx as the cash leg.

CEO Zach Walsh framed the company’s approach to that convergence of payments, custody and settlement in a single line.

We think of settlement as one problem, not three.

Zach Walsh, CEO, HIFI

Walsh said custody and control remain the hardest technical problems as HIFI extends from payment rails into cards and capital markets, the two areas the new funding is meant to underwrite directly.

Visa Direct Payouts Reach More Than 4 Billion Cards

HIFI this month launched stablecoin push-to-card payouts through Visa Direct, starting with reach to more than 4 billion Visa cards worldwide, and has integrated with the Circle Payments Network. Visa and DTCC are founding validators of Circle’s Arc blockchain alongside BlackRock, Mastercard and Standard Chartered, tying HIFI’s payout rail to the same validator set overseeing that network.

The regulatory backdrop shifted twice in recent months. Payment stablecoins gained a federal framework under the GENIUS Act in July 2025, and the SEC issued an Innovation Exemption on September 17 letting permissioned venues trade tokenized US stocks onchain.

Stablecoin supply stands near $307 billion industry-wide, according to Blockworks, a base HIFI’s licensing plan is designed to plug directly into rather than route around. Matthew Miller said the round positions the company to serve developers working across chains.

“HIFI is building an important layer in that market, giving developers the infrastructure to create products that can operate across networks and borders,” Miller said.

The CCS read. HIFI’s real bet is regulatory, not technical: bringing licenses in-house lets it stand between banks and stablecoin flows without leaning on partner charters. That matters more than the $7 billion volume figure, since scaled settlement rails only survive under the current supervisory push if the operator holds its own approvals.

HIFI’s next test is whether it converts the Sumitomo, Dapper and Arival Bank relationships into direct licensed operations before DTCC’s October tokenization launch broadens the field of institutional counterparties competing for the same settlement business.

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Michael Saylor Calls Bitcoin Selloff an AI Rotation as MicroStrategy Sits $10 Billion Underwater
Bitcoin

Michael Saylor Calls Bitcoin Selloff an AI Rotation as MicroStrategy Sits $10 Billion Underwater

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BitcoinJune 4, 2026·5 min read

MicroStrategy’s $10 billion paper loss on its Bitcoin holdings exposes the risk profile institutional investors now face as crypto volatility intersects with tech sector capital rotation. Michael Saylor’s argument that recent Bitcoin weakness reflects temporary AI funding flows rather than fundamental crypto weakness will be tested by how long the market tolerates MSTR trading as a leveraged proxy for BTC price exposure.

  • MicroStrategy holds 843,706 Bitcoin at $75,702 average cost, now worth $10 billion less than purchase price at $64,000
  • Bitcoin ETFs have seen approximately $4 billion in outflows since May 14, with BTC down nearly 49% from October 2025 peak
  • Saylor attributes selloff to $400 billion in capital markets funding AI infrastructure over six months, not crypto weakness
  • $10B Unrealized loss on MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin treasury versus purchase cost basis
  • $400B Capital markets investment in AI infrastructure over six months, per Saylor’s estimate
  • 49% Bitcoin decline from October 2025 record to current price near $64,000

MicroStrategy’s unrealized loss on its Bitcoin treasury has swollen to approximately $10 billion, marking the steepest underwater position on the largest corporate cryptocurrency holding since the company began its aggressive accumulation strategy.

The company owns 843,706 Bitcoin purchased at an average cost of $75,702 per coin; at the current price near $64,000, that portfolio is valued at roughly $54 billion against a cost basis of $63.9 billion.

The gap has widened as Bitcoin has fallen nearly 49 percent from its October 2025 peak, dragging down MSTR stock, which trades as a leveraged proxy for BTC price movements in the eyes of many institutional investors.

The pressure is no longer merely theoretical. A June 1 SEC filing revealed that MicroStrategy sold 32 Bitcoin to fund preferred-stock dividend obligations, the first sale from its treasury since 2022.

While the volume was modest, the transaction signals that balance-sheet constraints are now beginning to force the company’s hand, even as Saylor maintains his conviction in Bitcoin’s long-term value.

Saylor Blames AI Capital Rotation for Bitcoin Selloff, Not Crypto Weakness

Michael Saylor has reframed the recent cryptocurrency decline not as evidence of Bitcoin weakness but as evidence of massive capital reallocation toward artificial intelligence infrastructure.

He points to approximately $400 billion deployed across the capital markets over the past six months into data centers and semiconductor equipment, with 2026 capital budgets at the largest US technology firms projected to exceed $600 billion.

Under this lens, the roughly $4 billion in Bitcoin ETF outflows since May 14 represent temporary repositioning rather than structural loss of confidence in digital assets.

Capital markets are funding the AI buildout at historic scale: ~$400B over 6 months. Bitcoin ETFs have seen ~$4B of outflows since May 14, pressuring $BTC. This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment. Volatility creates opportunity.

Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy founder and chairman

Saylor’s argument rests on the scale disparity between AI funding flows and crypto redemptions. If institutional capital is indeed being mobilized at unprecedented levels to fund generative AI buildout, then a $4 billion redeployment from crypto ETFs represents noise relative to the broader capital markets dynamic.

His framing attempts to position MicroStrategy’s loss not as a warning sign but as an artifact of temporary market inefficiency during a structural transition.

The timing of his commentary matters. Bitcoin’s decline to the $64,000 range represents a retreat from mid-May levels and an acute divergence from the optimism that surrounded spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in the United States earlier this year.

If Saylor’s rotation thesis holds water, the selloff becomes self-correcting once AI deployment capital reaches saturation and institutional allocators rediscover crypto as an alternative asset class.

MicroStrategy’s First Bitcoin Sale Since 2022 Signals Balance-Sheet Pressure

The sale of 32 Bitcoin to fund preferred dividends marks a tactical shift for MicroStrategy, which has pursued one of the most aggressive corporate Bitcoin accumulation strategies in the industry.

Between 2020 and mid-2025, the company had accumulated its 843,706-coin position through both treasury purchases and the issuance of convertible debt instruments, betting that Bitcoin appreciation would compound returns for shareholders. The decision to liquidate any portion of that holding to meet shareholder obligations suggests that the calculus has changed.

The amount sold was small, 32 coins represents roughly 0.004 percent of the total treasury, but the precedent is significant.

MicroStrategy structured its balance sheet around the assumption that Bitcoin would continue to appreciate, making leverage sustainable and share issuance accretive to shareholders. Once the company begins drawing on its Bitcoin holdings to service financial obligations, that assumption is tested.

Each quarter going forward, investors will scrutinize whether new Bitcoin sales are necessary and, if so, at what rate they might accumulate.

A sustained selloff in BTC price could force MicroStrategy into a position where it must choose between liquidating additional Bitcoin at depressed prices or issuing additional equity to meet its dividend commitments, either path dilutes the appeal of the investment thesis.

Historical Parallel to 2000 Dot-Com Collapse Raises Questions About Market Stability

The irony of Saylor’s optimism is thick: in March 2000, MicroStrategy itself became the catalyst for a broader market reckoning that many historians mark as the beginning of the dot-com crash. On March 10, 2000, the same day the Nasdaq Composite peaked, MicroStrategy stock traded at $333. Within ten days, on March 20, the stock fell to $86 in a single session, a decline exceeding 60 percent.

The trigger was an accounting restatement that erased approximately $66 million in reported revenue and turned profits into losses.

Saylor and two other company executives later paid roughly $11 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges related to the restatement, though without admitting wrongdoing. The episode damaged investor confidence not just in MicroStrategy but in the accounting and revenue recognition practices of the entire technology sector.

Analysts at PFR Capital have drawn a line between that moment and today’s market structure, raising an unsettling question: could MicroStrategy’s outsized leverage to Bitcoin and its prominent role as a corporate proxy for crypto exposure now carry similar systemic implications?

PFR Capital’s Jayson Hu framed the historical echo plainly: in March 2000, MicroStrategy altered its revenue recognition method, triggering a cascade of investor doubt about other technology companies’ accounting quality and profit claims. The resulting panic accelerated the broader Nasdaq collapse.

While a perfect parallel is impossible, Bitcoin’s asset class dynamics differ fundamentally from dot-com revenue-recognition disputes, the structural risk is real. MicroStrategy trades as a leveraged Bitcoin proxy, and any shock to MSTR’s credibility or balance sheet could reverberate through institutional allocators’ confidence in both the company and the underlying cryptocurrency.

The comparison is imperfect but not irrelevant to institutional investors building large crypto positions.

Next Test: How Long Institutional Investors Accept Leverage Without Price Appreciation

MicroStrategy’s current position hinges on a near-term recovery in Bitcoin price or a sustained rally that allows the company to work down its paper loss. At $64,000, Bitcoin would need to rally approximately $11,700, or roughly 18 percent, to bring MicroStrategy back to its average cost basis.

Absent that appreciation, the company faces a lengthening period of negative carry on its capital structure, which will test investor patience with a leveraged bet that is underwater.

Institutional holders of MSTR face a difficult calculus: they can maintain the position in hopes that Saylor’s AI rotation thesis plays out and Bitcoin rebounds, or they can exit while the loss is still measured in billions rather than trillions. The fact that the company has already begun selling Bitcoin to meet obligations suggests that the leverage is tighter than executives may have

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OpenAI’s $18 Billion Chip Financing Trouble Rattles AI Boom Narrative
AI News

OpenAI’s $18 Billion Chip Financing Trouble Rattles AI Boom Narrative

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UncategorizedMay 7, 2026·5 min read

OpenAI’s failure to secure approximately $18 billion in financing for a custom chip partnership with Broadcom signals deepening stress in AI infrastructure capital markets, threatening the viability of the sector’s $600-720 billion 2026 spending outlook. For institutional investors in crypto and blockchain, this financing gap exposes broader liquidity constraints that could redirect capital away from competing infrastructure plays and reshape the timeline for AI-driven tokenized compute networks.

  • OpenAI cannot close $18 billion in financing for Broadcom custom-chip tranche, part of larger $500 billion hardware buildout commitment
  • Hyperscaler AI capex projected at $600-720 billion in 2026, with three-quarters earmarked for infrastructure; lenders increasingly skeptical of return timelines
  • Nvidia receivables reached $33 billion as customers delay payment; OpenAI projected to burn $115 billion cumulatively by 2029 despite rising revenue
  • $18B Financing gap in OpenAI-Broadcom chip deal, part of $500B total commitment
  • $33B Nvidia customer receivables, near all-time high as payment delays extend
  • $115B OpenAI cumulative cash burn through 2029, against $600-720B industry capex target

OpenAI faces a critical funding shortfall on its Broadcom custom-chip program, unable to secure approximately $18 billion required to fund an early tranche of the multi-year accelerator rollout, according to reporting Thursday.

The gap represents the first visible crack in the company’s broader $500 billion hardware commitment, which spans silicon design, networking equipment, power infrastructure, and data center capacity, announced in October 2025.

The 10-gigawatt custom-chip initiative sits at the core of OpenAI’s strategy to reduce dependence on Nvidia and control its AI infrastructure costs, making the financing failure a material setback for the company’s operational independence and capital efficiency planning.

OpenAI’s $115 Billion Cash Burn Through 2029 Collides With Tightening Lender Confidence

OpenAI is projected to burn through approximately $115 billion cumulatively by 2029 even as its revenue scales, leaving limited margin for execution missteps or market downturns. The company has already faced investor scrutiny over missed internal growth targets, signaling that its unit economics and path to profitability remain contested among backers.

Against this backdrop, lenders are now questioning whether promised returns from AI infrastructure investments will materialize on the timeline originally modeled when these mega-deals were inked.

The financing gap emerged as partners have been forced to shoulder an outsized share of infrastructure funding. Oracle raised $18 billion in bonds during September 2025 specifically to backstop its approximately $300 billion commitment to OpenAI, demonstrating how traditional tech giants have stepped into the breach where pure-play venture and growth capital has proven insufficient.

That pattern, where strategic partners use their own balance sheets to keep deals moving, now appears to have reached its limits, with OpenAI unable to find additional lenders willing to fund the Broadcom tranche at terms acceptable to all parties.

The financing failure is not yet a public default or deal termination, but it signals that capital market participants have begun pricing in execution risk on AI infrastructure promises.

Nvidia Receivables Hit $33 Billion as Customer Payment Delays Extend Across Sector

Nvidia itself has flagged a sharp rise in unpaid customer balances, with receivables now sitting near $33 billion, among the highest levels in the company’s history, as hyperscalers and AI-focused firms take considerably longer to settle invoices.

The mounting receivables suggest that downstream customers purchasing Nvidia GPUs are facing their own cash constraints or are deliberately stretching payment cycles in hopes of extracting concessions or waiting for alternative suppliers to come online.

This dynamic creates a liquidity squeeze that cascades backward through the supply chain: Nvidia must finance its customers’ purchases, which in turn makes Nvidia less willing to extend aggressive credit terms to new buyers.

The financing stress is not isolated to OpenAI or Nvidia. Hyperscalers collectively are expected to spend between $600 and $720 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, with roughly three-quarters of that total earmarked for AI infrastructure, chips, power, cooling, and data centers.

At that scale, even modest delays in securing financing or customer hesitation in committing to spend can ripple across the entire sector. Lenders have begun to signal heightened skepticism about whether promised AI returns will arrive on the originally projected schedule, reducing their appetite for new commitments or refinancing existing ones.

Investor Michael Burry and other skeptics have already questioned whether some of these mega-deals are sufficiently anchored in signed commitments versus aspirational frameworks.

OpenAI Must Choose Between Restructuring, Replacing Lenders, or Trimming Chip Rollout

OpenAI now faces three primary options to resolve the $18 billion shortfall. The company can attempt to restructure the tranche, seeking longer payment schedules, lower upfront capital requirements, or revised milestone hurdles, to ease near-term funding pressure.

Alternatively, it can seek replacement lenders, though the market conditions that made the original lenders hesitant are unlikely to have improved significantly. A third path, and potentially the most consequential, would be to reduce the scope and speed of the chip rollout itself, scaling back the 10-gigawatt target or deferring phases of the program.

Each option carries distinct implications for the 2026 AI capex outlook. A restructuring delays costs but does not reduce them, likely pushing spending into 2027 and beyond, which could dampen the $600-720 billion sector forecast.

Replacing lenders at new terms may be possible but would likely involve higher interest rates or stricter covenants, increasing OpenAI’s cost of capital across the program. A genuine rollout reduction would be the most visible concession to market constraints and could spark broader reassessment of industry capex guidance across cloud giants and AI specialists.

The timing matters because 2026 is positioned as the inflection year for AI infrastructure returns. If major players are already unable to fund committed programs on their original timelines, the narrative of an unstoppable, well-capitalized AI build-out will face credibility damage.

Institutional investors, including those holding stakes in crypto infrastructure plays positioned as alternatives to traditional AI capex, should monitor whether OpenAI’s Broadcom shortfall triggers similar financing gaps at other hyperscalers or prompts wider reassessment of project economics across the sector.

OpenAI has not publicly disclosed its preferred resolution path or timeline for closing the funding gap. Watch for announcements regarding restructured terms with Broadcom, identification of replacement or co-lending partners, or revised guidance on the custom-chip rollout timeline in the coming weeks, each outcome will signal whether the sector’s infrastructure financing story remains intact or faces material repricing.

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michaelsaylor-keynote-bitcoin2026
Bitcoin

Michael Saylor Keynote: The Birth of Digital Credit

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Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin 2026 Keynote — CCS Exclusive
CCS Exclusive · Keynote Coverage

Michael Saylor Keynote:
The Birth of
Digital Credit

Michael Saylor took the Bitcoin 2026 stage to declare that a new era in capital markets has begun — and that Strategy’s STRC has already become the most liquid preferred stock on Earth.

By CCS Editorial Desk  ·  Bitcoin Conference 2026
Exclusive Analysis
STRC
“Digital credit is a killer application of Bitcoin. We expect to sell tens of billions — then hundreds of billions — then trillions of dollars of digital credit.” — Michael Saylor, Bitcoin 2026
Full Keynote · Courtesy of Bitcoin Magazine
STRC by the numbers — as presented at Bitcoin 2026
$8.5B AUM
Reached in under 9 months, making STRC the world’s largest preferred stock
11.5% Yield
Tax-deferred dividend — equivalent to ~24% in a high-tax city like New York
2.7× Sharpe Ratio
5× better than the best competing credit instrument; beats Nvidia’s 1.89
$38B Run Rate
April demand annualized — from zero in under twelve months
Chapter I · The Big Idea

Engineering Credit the Way Satoshi Engineered Money

Michael Saylor opened his keynote at Bitcoin 2026 not with a price prediction but with an architectural argument. Just as Satoshi Nakamoto assembled proof-of-work, public-key cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking into ideal capital — a non-sovereign, bearer store of value without counterparty risk — Saylor claims to have done the same for credit.

The vehicle is STRC, the perpetual preferred equity issued by Strategy. Its building blocks are, individually, unremarkable: listed public companies, preferred equity structures, monthly variable dividends, return-of-capital tax treatment, shelf registrations, and ATM programs. Each has existed for decades or longer. The breakthrough, Saylor argues, was the combination — marrying them to a Bitcoin balance sheet to produce what he calls digital credit: liquid, transparent, homogeneous, accessible to any retail account, and carrying no fee.

“Bitcoin represents ideal capital,” he told the crowd. “Digital credit is ideal credit. We engineered it the same way.”

“The world’s built on capital. The world runs on credit. Our company strategy converts capital into credit.”

Chapter II · Stripping Risk from a Volatile Asset

How You Extract an 11% Yield from a 40-Volatility Asset

The mathematics Saylor presented are deliberately simple. Bitcoin has compounded at roughly 38% per year over the past five years — far above gold at 16%, real estate at 6%, or money markets at 3%. Since you cannot pay a credit dividend higher than the expected return of the underlying capital, those asset classes impose a ceiling on what any asset-backed credit product can yield. Bitcoin’s ceiling is the highest of any mainstream asset.

Strategy’s approach is to over-collateralize: at 4-to-1 or 5-to-1 collateral ratios, Bitcoin would need to fall 80% before a credit investor loses a dollar of principal. The capital investor absorbs all of that downside; the credit investor sits safely behind them. Volatility — Bitcoin’s notorious 40-point swings — is mathematically stripped away when you target a par value and pay out only the first slice of return.

In Saylor’s framing, the instrument performs “signal processing on a financial signal.” The first 11% of expected return goes to STRC holders. Everything above that — the excess volatility, the excess return — flows to the common equity. Three distinct products emerge from one underlying asset: digital capital (Bitcoin), digital credit (STRC), and digital equity (Strategy common stock).

Chapter III · A Product That Didn’t Exist

The Largest Preferred in the World — Before Its First Birthday

Saylor displayed a chart of the ten largest preferred stocks globally. STRC sits atop a list that includes preferred issues from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Fannie Mae. Many of those instruments, he noted, are effectively impossible for retail investors to find, let alone trade — some are legally restricted to institutional buyers, and their tickers are nearly ungoogle-able.

STRC is not merely the largest. By Saylor’s presentation, it is 25× more liquid than the next-best preferred stock, turning over roughly 4.5% of its AUM in daily trading volume. Liquidity has grown by a factor of eight in five months. At the time of the conference, daily liquidity was approaching $400 million.

Instrument Sharpe Ratio Est. Yield Liquidity Tax Treatment
STRC (Strategy) 2.7 11.5% ~$400M / day Return of capital (deferred)
Nvidia (NVDA) 1.89 — Very high Capital gains / ordinary
Top bank preferreds ~0.5 5–7% Low–moderate Qualified dividend
Private credit funds <0.5 8.5% Illiquid Fully taxable
Money markets Negative 3–4% Daily Fully taxable
S&P 500 Index <1 1–2% div Very high Qualified dividend
Chapter IV · The Comeback of Preferred Capital

A 100-Year Gap, Closed

One of the more historically grounded passages in Saylor’s keynote was his argument that STRC represents less of an innovation and more of a revival. In the 19th century, preferred stocks financed the railroads and much of the early industrial revolution, comprising as much as 20–40% of corporate capital structures. Over the course of the 20th century, preferred equity fell out of use. Regulatory changes, tax policy, and the rise of bond markets pushed them to the institutional margins.

“Now in the 21st century,” Saylor said, “we’ve reintroduced the idea of preferred credit back into the capital markets.” The difference, he argues, is that this time the underlying collateral is not railroad track or factory equipment — it is Bitcoin, the highest-performing asset class of the last decade.

The shelf registration innovation amplifies this point. Before Strategy began issuing digital credit instruments, the largest shelf registration ever executed on a credit instrument globally was $500 million. Strategy has now filed a $21 billion shelf registration for STRC alone — a figure roughly 40 times the previous world record, according to Saylor.

Chapter V · Adoption and the Three-Million-Household Mark

From Institutional Indexes to Robin Hood Retail

Saylor’s growth numbers border on the incredible. Monthly demand for STRC fell to roughly $80 million in February during a sharp Bitcoin drawdown, then surged to $1.5 billion in March and $3.5 billion in April — a monthly demand run rate that annualizes to $38 billion. “How many products in the world,” he asked, “went from zero to $20 billion a year in their first year? There aren’t many.”

Adoption is broad. By Saylor’s count, roughly 80% of STRC is held in retail accounts — more than 120,000 distinct accounts, across E*Trade, Robinhood, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. He estimates that approximately three million households are currently benefiting from the instrument.

Institutional adoption is accelerating in parallel. BlackRock and Van Eck, two of the largest credit fund managers in the world, both hold STRC as the third-largest position in their respective credit indexes, representing 2–6% of fund assets. As money flows into those indexes, it flows into STRC — and from there, into Bitcoin. Additionally, 21Shares has already launched an STRC-embedded ETF in Europe, while Strive is preparing a U.S.-listed digital yield fund.

Chapter VI · The Layer 3 Vision

Stable Coins, Streaming Dividends, and the $200 Trillion Endgame

The second half of Saylor’s keynote zoomed out to what he calls the “Layer 3” opportunity. If Bitcoin is Layer 1 (the capital asset) and STRC is Layer 2 (digital credit), then Layer 3 is the ecosystem of products built on top: tokenized STRC, ETFs, bank accounts, stable coins, and private funds that use STRC as their yield engine.

He described companies already building in this space — Apex, Saturn, and Hermetica — all constructing Bitcoin-backed yield products or stablecoin-backed yield products on top of Strategy’s infrastructure. Tokenized STRC grew from nothing to over $200 million in just four weeks, and Saylor said he expected it to cross $1 billion in AUM within weeks.

As a concrete near-term move, Saylor announced that Strategy would seek shareholder approval to shift STRC from monthly to semi-monthly dividend payments. The physics analogy he employed was apt: doubling the frequency of a signal takes it an octave higher — higher fidelity, tighter oscillation, lower volatility. If approved, the first semi-monthly dividend payment would arrive July 15th, making STRC the only stock in the world paying a semi-monthly dividend out of roughly 24,000 publicly listed companies.

The long arc of Saylor’s vision: drive Bitcoin to $10 million per coin, build a $200 trillion network, and give every person on Earth access to a high-yield digital savings account yielding 8–10% annually. “Fix the money, fix the world,” he concluded. “Digital credit is the next killer application to fix the money.”

CMT Digital Thumbnail
Uncategorized

Capital Markets Are Going Onchain – CMT Digital Is Already There.

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CMT Digital: Capital Markets Are Going Onchain | Crypto Coin Show
Institutional Perspective · Venture Capital

Capital Markets Are Going Onchain.
CMT Digital Is Already There.

Partner Sam Hallene on why 2026 is the year crypto gets boring — and why that’s the biggest bull case yet for stablecoins, tokenization, and the re-architecture of global finance.

By Ashton Addison Crypto Coin Show March 2026
Watch the Full Interview
$500M+
Assets Under Management
200+
Portfolio Companies
Several
Unicorns Backed
$136M
Fund IV (Nov 2025)
The Firm

A Trading Firm’s Bet That Blockchain Becomes Finance’s Backbone

CMT Digital is the blockchain and digital-assets arm of CMT Group — a quantitative trading firm operating for nearly 30 years. That heritage shapes everything. CMT entered crypto in 2013 through the lens of counterparty risk mitigation, then sharpened its focus when the Ethereum whitepaper made clear that smart contracts could run financial logic natively onchain. A venture thesis formed, and CMT has been building its portfolio around it ever since.

Today the firm manages over $500M across four funds, with 200+ companies and a number of unicorns — including early positions in Circle, Coinbase, FalconX, Ethena, Figure, and ConsenSys. In November 2025, CMT closed Fund IV at $136M, one of the largest crypto VC raises in a difficult fundraising environment. Watch the full interview above for Partner Sam Hallene’s background and full story.

Fund Evolution

Four Funds, One Through-Line

Fund I · 2017
Establishing Access
Early positions in Coinbase and Circle — the first platforms giving retail and institutions a compliant way into digital assets.
Fund II · $130M
Building Infrastructure
Market structure, custody, compliance rails. ConsenSys, FalconX, and the developer tooling layer.
Fund III · $100M
Utility and Application
DeFi protocols with real product-market fit: Ethena, Maple, Zero Hash, Coinflow — companies where onchain rails produced measurably better outcomes.
Fund IV · $136M · Nov 2025
Re-architecting Global Finance
Stablecoins, tokenization, institutional derivatives, prediction markets. The thesis has arrived — now it’s about deployment at scale, re-architecting the core plumbing of global finance on modern rails.
Market View

“2026 Is the Year Crypto Gets Boring”

Hallene delivered this line with a grin — and it deserves unpacking. “Boring” is the highest compliment a market infrastructure investor can pay. When regulatory frameworks solidify, when tokenized loans trade as freely as any other asset class, when stablecoin yield flows to end users through apps they already use — the speculative premium evaporates and the utility premium takes over. That’s the transition CMT Digital is betting on.

“Now has never been a better time to start a company. A lot of binary variables have swung positive.”

Sam Hallene, Partner — CMT Digital

The macro backdrop is structural, not speculative. The GENIUS Act is live, giving institutions a regulatory playbook for compliant stablecoin issuance. The SEC and CFTC have issued joint guidance. The US Treasury has a direct incentive to promote stablecoin adoption — stablecoins are currently among the largest marginal buyers of US treasuries. Hallene’s contrarian read: sentiment has lagged fundamentals. Bitcoin soft and a quiet altcoin market have dampened enthusiasm, but for a firm with CMT’s institutional orientation, that gap is exactly where long-term alpha compounds.

01

Stablecoins as rails

The dollar goes onchain first. Everything else follows. Regulatory clarity is forcing every major tech company to contemplate stablecoin issuance.

02

Tokenization compounds

Real-world assets gain liquidity, provenance, and programmability onchain. Cost savings force adoption — Figure proved it at 150bps.

03

Derivatives mature

As institutions enter, demand for structured hedging and volatility strategies intensifies. Options are the next frontier after perps.

04

Information markets

Prediction markets are becoming mainstream signals. The next generation moves toward real-time sentiment pricing with demographic intelligence.

Deep Dive · Stablecoins

Distribution Is King — And the Battle Has Just Begun

Tether captured global demand from populations seeking dollar access outside US institutional trust. Circle captured the compliance-conscious business community. Both are entrenched. But the GENIUS Act reshapes the competitive dynamics entirely.

A compliant stablecoin issuer cannot differentiate on the collateral side — the rules constrain what you can do with backing assets, by design. Differentiation shifts entirely to distribution. And distribution belongs to whoever already owns the customer relationship: Apple, Google, PayPal, Shopify, every major bank. The yield-sharing question is the most consequential unresolved variable. The GENIUS Act prohibits paying yield directly on the stablecoin, but doesn’t prevent revenue-sharing agreements with distribution partners — the Circle-Coinbase model is the template. If the Clarity Act extends that logic to end users, deposits could meaningfully migrate toward fintech apps earning money-market-equivalent returns with instant settlement.

Hallene’s honest read on the yield outcome: likely a legal ban, difficult to enforce, ultimately resolved through loopholes and litigation. The direction of travel favors stablecoin adoption regardless.

Deep Dive · Tokenization

The Proof Point: From Home Equity Lines to SBA Loans

Hallene’s anchor example is Figure — the home equity line of credit company CMT backed early. A 2019 paper projected 25–26 basis points of origination cost savings by moving the loan lifecycle onchain: cryptographic provenance of underwriting documents, transparent servicing records, frictionless secondary transfers. Real-world execution has now delivered approximately 150 basis points of savings — six times the original projection. Figure is now public.

The principle is simple and powerful: onchain provenance makes assets easier to buy. When buyers can verify every underwriting step without legal review teams and escrow delays, the cost of capital falls. Lower cost of capital forces adoption. The tokenization roadmap follows a logical sequence — dollars first, then dollar-denominated assets, then everything else.

“Cost savings force adoption. We’re seeing that with stablecoins, and with early examples like Figure.”

Sam Hallene, Partner — CMT Digital
Portfolio Spotlights

The Companies Building the Onchain Economy

Sam Hallene named several portfolio companies throughout the conversation. Each represents a distinct wedge in CMT Digital’s infrastructure thesis.

Tokenized Credit

Figure

Home equity line of credit origination — onchain. Now public.

CMT Digital’s flagship proof point. Figure originated HELOCs on blockchain rails, demonstrating that cryptographic provenance of loan documents translates directly into lower cost of capital — from a projected 25 bps of savings in 2019 to a demonstrated 150 bps today. The public listing is the first major exit signal from the CMT thesis: real-world credit at scale, built on blockchain infrastructure.

Asset Class
Home equity lines of credit
Key Metric
~150bps origination savings vs. traditional
Status
Public company
CMT Role
Early-stage investor
Small Business Credit

NEWITY

SBA 7(a) lending platform bringing $350B in underserved credit onchain.

In February 2026, CMT led NEWITY’s first-ever external raise — $11M as a SAFE — to accelerate its pivot from AI-driven SBA lending into blockchain-native loan origination. The case starts with a stark fact: small businesses represent 99.9% of US firms and nearly half the nation’s workforce, yet face a $350 billion annual funding shortfall.

NEWITY has already demonstrated scale: $12 billion in loans to over 125,000 businesses since 2020, with AI-first underwriting that compresses traditional 12-week SBA timelines to roughly 21 days. The onchain play is a liquidity unlock — SBA 7(a) loans are government-guaranteed and highly homogeneous, making them ideal tokenization candidates: pools represented as digital instruments, tradable on secondary markets, recycling capital back to new borrowers at scale.

What has to be true for this to work? Regulatory clarity for tokenized SBA instruments must hold; NEWITY’s compliance-heavy origination workflows need to migrate onchain without sacrificing underwriting speed; and institutional or DeFi-native capital needs to show up as secondary market buyers. CMT’s bet is that NEWITY’s 125,000 borrower relationships and $12B in loan history give it an insurmountable head start over crypto-native credit protocols building from scratch.

CMT Round
Led $11M SAFE (Dec 2025)
Track Record
$12B loans · 125,000+ businesses
Market Gap
$350B annual small business funding shortfall
Speed Edge
21-day funding vs. 12-week national average
Institutional Derivatives

STS Digital

The options infrastructure layer institutional crypto has been waiting for.

Offering options on 400+ cryptocurrencies simultaneously is genuinely hard — technically and from a risk-management standpoint. Most platforms haven’t solved it. STS Digital has. Founded by derivatives veterans from Credit Suisse and UBS, the Bermuda-regulated firm delivers a unified platform for spot, vanilla and exotic options, and structured products across 400+ tokens.

In February 2026, CMT led STS Digital’s $30M strategic round alongside Kraken parent Payward, F-Prime (Fidelity), and Arrington Capital. The timing reflects a market reality: crypto options open interest has crossed $40 billion, and institutional demand for hedging tools is compounding as perp-only exposure no longer satisfies sophisticated risk managers. Hallene’s case for options over perps is direct: the October 10 mass liquidation event showed how cascading perp liquidations amplify selloffs catastrophically. Options cap maximum loss and remove auto-deleveraging risk. As institutional flows enter crypto, they bring the risk management toolkit of traditional finance — and that toolkit is built around options.

Hallene’s conviction phrase says it all: STS has built a meaningful liquidity moat in crypto options, and liquidity is the most durable competitive advantage in any financial market.

CMT Round
Led $30M strategic (Feb 2026)
Co-investors
Kraken (Payward), Fidelity (F-Prime), Arrington Capital
Coverage
400+ tokens · spot, vanilla & exotic options, structured products
Regulation
Bermuda Monetary Authority (Class T license)
Prediction Markets

TBD.vote

Sentiment markets — where polling meets skin in the game.

TBD.vote isn’t trying to out-Polymarket Polymarket. Hallene is deliberate on this distinction. Polymarket excels at deep liquidity in long-duration, oracle-resolved questions. TBD attacks a different surface: any user can create a poll, KYC-verified voters resolve it through consensus, and timeframes are arbitrary — including tomorrow.

The KYC demographic layer is what makes TBD commercially interesting beyond pure prediction. Segmented voter behavior — verified cohorts wagering on specific policy or market outcomes — produces signal that political strategists, media companies, and brands will pay for. The resolution mechanism also removes oracle trust assumptions entirely, which matters as prediction markets become serious institutional information sources. Hallene’s framing: we’re in early innings of prediction markets being treated as mainstream signal, and TBD is positioning for that transition as a sentiment intelligence layer, not a Polymarket clone.

Model
Two-sided: polling platform + wagering layer
Resolution
Verified voter consensus (not oracle-dependent)
Key Advantage
KYC demographics + arbitrary resolution timeframes
Competitive Angle
Sentiment intelligence layer, not Polymarket replacement
Prime Brokerage

FalconX

Institutional crypto prime brokerage — the market’s plumbing layer.

A CMT portfolio company since 2019, FalconX built the infrastructure institutional crypto participants had been missing: credit lines, cross-collateralization, portfolio margining, and consolidated execution across venues. In Hallene’s framework, prime brokerage is what enables the derivatives market to mature — you need trusted intermediaries willing to warehouse risk and extend credit before large-scale institutional trading becomes operationally viable. CMT has been a hands-on partner across product roadmap, fundraising, and hiring for over five years.

Category
Digital asset prime brokerage
CMT Since
2019
Role in thesis
Institutional liquidity infrastructure
Significance
Enables scale across derivatives and credit markets
For Founders

Raising Capital in the Sentiment Gap

Hallene’s advice for founders in tokenization and capital markets was candid: it’s a difficult time to raise. Bitcoin soft and altcoins quiet have created a cautious funding environment even as structural progress has never been clearer. His view — CMT is open for business, actively investing, and the binary regulatory variables that were existential risks twelve months ago have now resolved in crypto’s favor.

📐

Quantify your onchain wedge

CMT backs entrepreneurs who can demonstrate measurable improvement — cost savings, speed, liquidity. The Figure model (quantify the basis points) is the benchmark.

⚡

AI usage is now a diligence question

CMT has added “how are you using AI?” to their core underwriting checklist. Teams leveraging AI to punch above their headcount weight are viewed as structurally advantaged.

📈

Don’t mistake sentiment for fundamentals

CMT has seen this movie before. The smart money buys infrastructure during the sentiment trough — not at the top of the cycle.

The Bigger Picture

The Boring Future Is the Bullish Future

There is a version of crypto’s future that looks nothing like its past — no speculative frenzy, no memecoin supercycles, no dramatic collapses from overleveraged offshore intermediaries. Just tokenized treasuries settling in seconds. SBA loans trading in liquid secondary markets. Stablecoin yield flowing to users through apps they already use. Options desks hedging institutional portfolios across 400 digital assets with the rigor of equity derivatives.

That’s the future CMT Digital has been quietly building toward since 2013. Hallene calls it boring. After two cycles of not-boring, boring sounds excellent.

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Roxom Launches Bitcoin-Denominated Futures on Global Market Benchmarks

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Roxom Launches Bitcoin-Denominated Futures on Global Market Benchmarks
October 20, 2025

Roxom, a next-generation capital markets exchange, announced the launch of Bitcoin-denominated perpetual futures, allowing traders worldwide to access 24/7 benchmark assets such as the S&P 500 and Gold, directly in Bitcoin.

For decades, global markets have been priced in fiat currencies. Roxom’s new Bitcoin benchmarks introduce a neutral and transparent reference standard, marking a historic shift toward a financial system where Bitcoin becomes the unit of account and strengthening its financial role.

“For decades, markets have been priced in currencies shaped by monetary policy and politics. By introducing Bitcoin-denominated benchmarks, we’re creating a new reference standard that is transparent, global and that changes our perspective on traditional markets. This launch is the foundation for a new financial era.” — Borja Martel Seward, Co-founder & CEO of Roxom

From this day forward, investors will be able to access new trading pairs like S&P500/BTC or GOLD/BTC, combinations that have never existed before.

Roxom’s launch marks the next phase of a broader industry shift: the institutionalization of Bitcoin as a reference unit for global markets, rather than solely a store of value. It represents the first step forward in building a full-scale Bitcoin financial architecture, where trust and performance are measured in the world’s hardest money.

“Pricing the world in Bitcoin is the next natural step for the entire industry. In the same way that emerging market countries like Argentina have done so with the USD, the world will soon follow the same path with Bitcoin.” — Borja Martel Seward