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01
We read everything.
Hundreds of headlines, posts, filings, and primary sources every week, surfaced by people who cover this market full time.
02The Progress Bar Newsletter
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A single 200-word email lands in your inbox every Friday. The whole week in tokenization, in under two minutes.
03The First Trillion Podcast
We go deeper.
We sit with the operators behind the stories that matter most. Long-form audio for when 200 words isn't enough.
Your weekly briefing
The Progress Bar Newsletter.
The Progress BarLive preview
Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 694 relevant tokenization news stories from the week, analyzed the key stories on our weekly podcast, then distilled what you need to know into a few hundred words in this newsletter. Delivered to your inbox in time for Friday happy hour in NYC (usually).
Last week was quiet. This week, everything happened at once. The CFTC published its first draft rules for crypto market structure, ICE (the company that owns the NYSE) made its first move into tokenized stocks, Stripe made a stablecoin the default across all its products, and Europe moved to rewrite the MiCA rule that has held back euro stablecoins. With the CLARITY Act stalled in Congress, regulators and the biggest incumbents are writing the rulebook themselves.
But first, the metrics.
Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz)
📈 RWA market cap was up slightly WoW to $39.0 billion 🏆 Biggest RWA winner: JP Morgan's JLTXX added $100M in one of their money market funds 🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added $160M
📈 Stablecoin market cap was flat at ~$295.0 billion 🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: Falcon USD added ~$350M 🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added just under $600M
📈 Onchain risk free rates: Short term treasuries (1m): 3.90% Aave / DeFi: 4.16% (onchain rate premium is back, roughly 30 bps above short-term treasuries)
Stories we're tracking this week
A packed week across regulation, tokenized equities, stablecoins, and infrastructure. Here's what you need to know.
The CFTC proposed its first major federal crypto market structure framework, covering leveraged, margined, and financed retail crypto transactions under a new registered venue type called the Crypto Asset Market. Futures, options, swaps, and perps stay under existing CFTC derivative frameworks. Pure spot transactions remain under state-level money transmitter rules. A 60-day comment period is now open. The proposal includes margin caps, listing standards, proof of reserves, customer account segregation, and anti-manipulation rules that would constrain low-float, high-FDV token launches.
OKX and ICE filed the first tokenized stock notice under the SEC's innovation exemption, forming a 50/50 joint venture co-chaired by Andrew Cuomo. The platform launches with roughly 60 US stocks, running on OKX's X Layer chain via Uniswap. A 30-day objection window is now open for issuers. The stock list skews heavily toward AI and crypto names including NVIDIA, Tesla, Circle, Securitize, and SpaceX, with no traditional consumer staples in sight. Cerebrus has been the only objector so far.
Mike Cagney's new wallet startup Navra raised $19 million in a Series A led by Ribbit Capital, with Figure as its first named partner and participant in the round. Navra will be the first third-party wallet to connect to Figure Markets, which has not previously supported external wallets. The MPC-based wallet will natively offer yield through Figure's YLDS Pro product. Cagney previously founded SoFi and Figure, having taken both public.
"TODAY: Chainlink announced it is working to enable financial institutions to connect to @swiftcommunity's blockchain ledger through the Chainlink platform. Swift moves the equivalent of the world's GDP roughly every three days ⬇️" -- @chainlink (Chainlink)
Knife Fight in a Phone Booth
On this week's episode of The First Trillion, Johnny and Charlie covered the CFTC's landmark Reg CTX and CAM proposal, broke down the OKX and ICE tokenized stock joint venture filing and what the SEC's innovation exemption caps actually mean in practice (with a shoutout to Billy Sanders' quantitative breakdown on the TAC Research Hub), discussed the EU's proposed MiCA stablecoin reserve reform, Navra's Series A, Securitize's expanded stock listing, and USDO going live. They also kicked things off with a wide-ranging discussion on agentic payments and commerce, and what it would actually take to see green shoots in that space.
The episode is available below and we've summarized it for you here.
Stay ahead of the curve
Be sure to follow us on X, LinkedIn, and Spotify for real-time updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and the occasional hot take that didn't make it into the Progress Bar or the First Trillion podcast episode or summary.
Until next week,
The TAC Team
Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 694 relevant tokenization news stories from the week, analyzed the key stories on our weekly podcast, then distilled what you need to know into a few hundred words in this newsletter. Delivered to your inbox in time for Friday happy hour in NYC (usually).
Last week was quiet. This week, everything happened at once. The CFTC published its first draft rules for crypto market structure, ICE (the company that owns the NYSE) made its first move into tokenized stocks, Stripe made a stablecoin the default across all its products, and Europe moved to rewrite the MiCA rule that has held back euro stablecoins. With the CLARITY Act stalled in Congress, regulators and the biggest incumbents are writing the rulebook themselves.
But first, the metrics.
Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz)
📈 RWA market cap was up slightly WoW to $39.0 billion 🏆 Biggest RWA winner: JP Morgan's JLTXX added $100M in one of their money market funds 🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added $160M
📈 Stablecoin market cap was flat at ~$295.0 billion 🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: Falcon USD added ~$350M 🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added just under $600M
📈 Onchain risk free rates: Short term treasuries (1m): 3.90% Aave / DeFi: 4.16% (onchain rate premium is back, roughly 30 bps above short-term treasuries)
Stories we're tracking this week
A packed week across regulation, tokenized equities, stablecoins, and infrastructure. Here's what you need to know.
The CFTC proposed its first major federal crypto market structure framework, covering leveraged, margined, and financed retail crypto transactions under a new registered venue type called the Crypto Asset Market. Futures, options, swaps, and perps stay under existing CFTC derivative frameworks. Pure spot transactions remain under state-level money transmitter rules. A 60-day comment period is now open. The proposal includes margin caps, listing standards, proof of reserves, customer account segregation, and anti-manipulation rules that would constrain low-float, high-FDV token launches.
OKX and ICE filed the first tokenized stock notice under the SEC's innovation exemption, forming a 50/50 joint venture co-chaired by Andrew Cuomo. The platform launches with roughly 60 US stocks, running on OKX's X Layer chain via Uniswap. A 30-day objection window is now open for issuers. The stock list skews heavily toward AI and crypto names including NVIDIA, Tesla, Circle, Securitize, and SpaceX, with no traditional consumer staples in sight. Cerebrus has been the only objector so far.
Mike Cagney's new wallet startup Navra raised $19 million in a Series A led by Ribbit Capital, with Figure as its first named partner and participant in the round. Navra will be the first third-party wallet to connect to Figure Markets, which has not previously supported external wallets. The MPC-based wallet will natively offer yield through Figure's YLDS Pro product. Cagney previously founded SoFi and Figure, having taken both public.
"TODAY: Chainlink announced it is working to enable financial institutions to connect to @swiftcommunity's blockchain ledger through the Chainlink platform. Swift moves the equivalent of the world's GDP roughly every three days ⬇️" -- @chainlink (Chainlink)
Knife Fight in a Phone Booth
On this week's episode of The First Trillion, Johnny and Charlie covered the CFTC's landmark Reg CTX and CAM proposal, broke down the OKX and ICE tokenized stock joint venture filing and what the SEC's innovation exemption caps actually mean in practice (with a shoutout to Billy Sanders' quantitative breakdown on the TAC Research Hub), discussed the EU's proposed MiCA stablecoin reserve reform, Navra's Series A, Securitize's expanded stock listing, and USDO going live. They also kicked things off with a wide-ranging discussion on agentic payments and commerce, and what it would actually take to see green shoots in that space.
The episode is available below and we've summarized it for you here.
Stay ahead of the curve
Be sure to follow us on X, LinkedIn, and Spotify for real-time updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and the occasional hot take that didn't make it into the Progress Bar or the First Trillion podcast episode or summary.
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