[███░░░░]: Supplying Assets in DeFi is a Securities Transaction?

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 1238 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).

Our favorite regulator, exalted "Crypto Mom", and outgoing SEC Commissioner, Hester Peirce, buried an ominous statement about DeFi in a recent statement about vaults.

The language she used suggests DeFi lending protocols like Euler, Aave, Kamino, etc. are engaging in a regulated securities activity when they offer yield in exchange for users supplying crypto and other assets into these protocols.

Does that mean Aave needs to register an offering for that ~3.5ish % yield generated from supplying USDC?

Potentially it is according to her statement.

Unfortunately since her tenure at the SEC has ended we probably won't get a clarification on this from Commissioner Peirce directly. This one did have my spidey-sense tingling though.

Elsewhere, a sovereign wealth fund just tokenized a private markets strategy, the Clarity Act is running out of runway, two of the biggest names in business payments added stablecoin accounts this week, and Ondo rolled out its highly anticipated network, with a twist!

August is supposed to be quiet. Someone forgot to tell the industry.

First, let's check in on our metrics. Be sure to check out the new RWA.xyz dashboards too (they look amazing).

Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz)

📈 RWA market cap was up ~3% WoW to $36.9 billion
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: xStocks added ~$115M (nearly 50% increase to $380M total, with much of that growth on Solana)
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added $186M to reach $3.7 billion

📈 Stablecoin market cap was down ~0.5% WoW to $297 billion
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: AUSD (Agora) added $33M
🏆 Biggest network winner: Monad added $150M to reach $1.1 billion

📈 Onchain risk free rates:
Short term treasuries (1m): Flat WoW (tracking SOFR with ~30bp fee spread)
Aave / DeFi: Flat WoW (broadly in line with tokenized treasury yields)

Stories we're tracking this week

• Mubadala Capital, a $430 billion Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, tokenized a private markets strategy via KAIO (formerly Libre), marking the first time a sovereign wealth fund has tokenized an investment strategy. The fund is live on Base, Solana, and Sui. Coinbase took the first investor position directly on its balance sheet. Sovereign wealth funds have consistently ranked as the most sought-after category of demand-side capital in tokenization surveys; landing Mubadala is a genuine signal that the sector is maturing.
• Ramp made stablecoin accounts generally available to all business customers, enabling any company on the platform to hold balances, earn rewards, pay vendors, and settle their Ramp card entirely in stablecoins. This is not a waitlist or a pilot. It is live for the full customer base. For startups and crypto-adjacent businesses that have struggled with clunky stablecoin accounting workflows, this integration with Ramp's existing bookkeeping syncs is a meaningful quality-of-life upgrade.
• Visa launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), introducing stablecoin minting functionality alongside Open USD and a new wallet-as-a-service layer. Businesses can now mint, hold, and redeem stablecoins through Visa's infrastructure. The stack rhymes closely with what Stripe and its portfolio companies have already shipped, and every major Visa stablecoin announcement continues to trail Stripe's by a few months. Still, the scale of what Visa is committing to in a single release is notable.
• Securitize completed its full Registered Investment Advisor registration under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, upgrading from its previous Exempt Reporting Advisor status, which had capped AUM at roughly $120 million. The upgrade allows Securitize to build separately managed accounts at any scale and construct new mixed-asset product strategies. Combined with their ATS, broker-dealer, transfer agent, and fund administration business, Securitize now has a complete regulatory toolkit for essentially any regulated financial activity in the US.
• Ondo announced the Ondo Network, a decentralized execution layer using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) for clearing and settlement, with Ondo Perps as the first use case. The pivot attaches directly to the explosive growth in RWA-based perpetual markets on Hyperliquid, where Trade XYZ's RWA perps (SK Hynix, S&P 500, Brent Oil, and others) now carry more volume than their crypto counterparts.
• The OCC denied Wise's (formerly TransferWise) application for a national trust bank charter, citing longstanding AML and Bank Secrecy Act deficiencies, resulting in a $4.2 million fine. This appears to be the first denial of a trust charter application under the Genius Act framework. The case is a direct reminder that terminal regulatory ambitions depend on clean compliance hygiene from the beginning. Wise is a veteran payments company; if they got tripped up, anyone can.
• Outgoing SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce published a statement on crypto vaults and lending strategies that included an ominous line: "Lending strategies also can carry significant federal securities law implications that do not turn on the assets involved." The remark was offered without elaboration, in the middle of an otherwise routine policy piece. Industry observers immediately flagged the implication: supplying assets like USDC into DeFi lending protocols for yield could potentially constitute a securities transaction, even if the underlying asset is not itself a security. No formal guidance followed. Peirce is on her way out. TBD what this signals for the SEC's next moves.

Tweet of the week

"lots of conversations about base over the last week. wanted to share my candid take after a week of listening and a lot of reflection over the last 6 months. first off - in case it's not obvious, the first quarter of 2026 was a punch in the face. I spent 2024 and 2025 making a"
-- @jessepollak (Jesse Pollak)

Summer Doldrums and the Clarity Countdown

This week on The First Trillion, Johnny and Charlie covered the Clarity Act's increasingly bleak legislative outlook (Polymarket dropped another 5 points during the recording), the first sovereign wealth fund to tokenize a strategy, Ramp and Visa's parallel pushes into stablecoin infrastructure, Securitize's full RIA registration, the Wise charter denial, and Ondo's pivot from L1 to execution layer. Charlie also previewed major new performance and yield charts that just shipped on the RWA.xyz homepage, including a live SOFR comparison against tokenized treasury yields and a net flows chart built specifically for institutional investors.

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