[███░░░░]: Hell of a Deel, Stripe

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 747 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).

Does it make sense to pay out global small and medium-sized suppliers with stablecoins? Deel and Stripe think so. CLARITY is a coinflip, a16z fights for its stablecoin portcos, and MoneyGram announced their stablecoin. The biggest story of the week was Securitize and Euler's announcement of their lending pool for tokenized assets, with a very cool feature baked in.

More below. But first...

WE NEED YOUR HELP! We've sent out this survey to leaders across tokenization and would love to have your input. The data we collect will 1) be shared out to participants and 2) inform how TAC shows up for the industry this year. Please take a minute to complete the survey!

Oh yeah! We also got a schooling in how tokenization is radically upgrading debt markets by Matthias Wyss, CEO @ Obligate.

But first, let's hit the metrics.

Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz)

📈 RWA market cap was down ~1.3% WoW to $31.3 billion
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: Figure Prime added $22M, up to $400M
🏆 Biggest network winner: Stellar added $400M, up to just under $3 billion

📈 Stablecoin market cap was down ~1.3% WoW to $299.6 billion
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: Ripple's RLUSD added $20M, up to $1.8 billion
🏆 Biggest network winner: Hyper EVM added $1.5 billion, up to $4 billion (continuation of converting bridged USDC into native USDC)

📈 Onchain risk free rates:
Short term treasuries (1m): 3.60%
Aave / DeFi: 3.53% (onchain rates have dipped below SOFR for the second consecutive month)

Stories we're tracking this week

A lot moved this week. Here is what matters.

• Mastercard launched always-on stablecoin settlement across eight blockchain networks, supporting USDC, RLUSD, and PYUSD among six stablecoins. Merchants accepting Mastercard can now opt to receive settlement in stablecoins rather than through the traditional banking channel. This mirrors the feature Visa rolled out earlier. With 3.7 billion cards and presence in 210 countries, Mastercard bringing stablecoin settlement onchain is one of the clearest signals yet that this infrastructure is moving from pilot to standard.
• Deel launched DLUSD, becoming the first major production user of Stripe's stablecoin trifecta (Bridge for issuance, Privy for wallets, Tempo for settlement). The global payroll platform serves 40,000 businesses and 1.5 million contractors across 150 countries. This is the first live, at-scale deployment of Stripe's assembled stablecoin infrastructure stack, and it targets one of the most persistent pain points in global payments: contractors receiving less than they were owed because of multi-bank routing fees and unpredictable FX slippage.
• Euler and Securitize launched the first programmatically compliant lending pool for tokenized assets, enabling tokenized securities like VanEck VBILL and a tokenized CLO fund to serve as borrowing collateral with compliance rules enforced automatically onchain. The key innovation is that liquidators must satisfy the same KYC, AML, and transfer restriction requirements as any other holder, all enforced at the protocol level. This solves a fundamental blocker for RWA lending markets: the inability to liquidate permissioned assets without a compliant counterparty in the loop.
• Citi released a follow-up to its landmark 2023 tokenization report, projecting a $5.5 trillion tokenized asset market by 2030 (bear: $2.7T, bull: $8.2T). The notable divergence from other major reports is their projection that public equities and fixed income, not private credit or funds, will be the dominant segment, driven by an assumption that 10% of US investors will be participating in onchain public securities by 2030. Ondo Global Markets recently crossed $1 billion in onchain equities, which puts the current baseline into context.
• MoneyGram unveiled MGUSD, its own branded stablecoin for cross-border remittances, following Western Union's move into stablecoin rails. MoneyGram has been using Stellar for cross-border payments for years and is now opting to capture the net interest margin directly by issuing its own stablecoin. The details beyond the ticker are limited, but the move signals that legacy remittance players view stablecoin issuance as a competitive necessity, not an experiment.
• A16Z filed a comment letter urging Treasury to standardize state-level stablecoin licensing requirements under the Genius Act's two-tiered framework. The firm argues that state charters for sub-$10 billion issuers should be fully fungible with national bank charters from the OCC. It is a reasonable goal for smaller issuers, though it does raise federalism questions about states' traditional ability to build distinct regulatory regimes.
• We launched a Clarity Act tracker on the coalition website this week, providing a full legislative history from FIT 21 through the current Senate process. The tracker will surface congressional testimony, relevant news, and key milestone dates as the bill works toward (or past) the psychological July 4th target. The ethics provision tied to the Trump family's crypto holdings remains the most significant near-term risk to passage, in our read.

Tweet of the week

"BREAKING: Mastercard is introducing always-on stablecoin settlement on Solana. 3.7 billion cards. 210+ countries. One of the largest payment networks on earth, now settling onchain."
-- @solana (Solana)

The Countdown to CLARITY begins

This week on The First Trillion, Johnny and Charlie covered the Citi 2030 tokenization report, Mastercard's stablecoin settlement launch, the Euler and Securitize compliant lending pool, Deel's production launch on Stripe's stablecoin stack, the MoneyGram stablecoin announcement, and A16Z's comment letter on stablecoin federalism under the Genius Act. Johnny also walked through the new TAC Clarity Act tracker and shared data from Electric Capital on how regulatory enforcement drove 50% of US crypto development offshore.

The episode is available below and we've summarized it for you here.

Issuing a bond just got 98% Cheaper

The oldest instrument in capital markets, the plain corporate bond, has barely changed in decades (centuries?). Issuing one still costs at least half a million dollars in fees, takes roughly six months, and only pencils out if you are raising $100 million or more. That math hands the tool to maybe the top 1% of companies on earth and locks everyone else out.

You can read the summary 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