Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team.

Tuning in from DAS New York this week (which was much more institutional than last year). A few things that caught my eye:

* A bipartisan Senate deal on stablecoin yields finally broke months of gridlock on the Clarity Act (banks won).

* Both NYSE and Nasdaq announced tokenization partners this week, but they have very different ideas about what comes next.

Our other highlights this week:

* Franklin Templeton puts five ETFs on the blockchain

* Coinbase and Better bringing crypto collateral to mortgage market

* MoonPay launches open wallet standard for AI agents

and much more. Let’s jump in 👇

🎙️ This week we spoke with Mike Belshe — the man who co-wrote HTTP/2 and just IPO’d a crypto bank. 👇

Top Boardroom Reads

* Making the Case for Tokenized Collateral (Nasdaq & The ValueExchange)

* Stablecoins and the Future of Payments: Evidence from Financial Markets (IMF)

* A Cross‑Border Guide to the New Era of Stablecoin Regulation (Gibson Dunn)

* Tokenized Deposits: The Future of Money (RWA.io)

* The UAE Blockchain Ecosystem 2026 (Blockchain Centre Abu Dhabi & Binance)

* Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers (BCG)

The Friday newsletter only scratches the surface. A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our PRO briefings.

Top Signals This Week

Franklin Templeton puts five ETFs on the blockchain

Franklin Templeton partners with Ondo Finance to tokenize five ETFs spanning U.S. equities, high-yield bonds, and gold. Ondo will purchase shares of the underlying ETFs and issue tokens that give holders rights to the return stream, not direct ownership of fund shares. The products trade 24/7 through crypto wallets, no brokerage account required, launching first across Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. U.S. availability depends on further regulatory clarity around on-chain distribution of registered funds. [RELEASE]

Why this matters: A top-ten global asset manager just outsourced tokenized distribution to a crypto-native platform. That's a first.

The structure tells you what they’re really doing. Ondo holds ETF shares in custody and issues a wrapper token. Counterparty risk sits with Ondo, not Franklin Templeton. In countries where directly tokenizing foreign fund shares is a regulatory headache, this is how you get around it. That is likely the point: in markets where direct tokenization of foreign fund shares faces heavy regulatory barriers, this wrapper is an interim access mechanism, especially as regulatory clarity continues to evolve in the U.S.

Be smart: The total on-chain tokenized stock market just crossed $1 billion; Ondo Global Markets alone holds over $700 million of that, commanding 60% market share.

Punchline: This deal is about reaching wallet-native investors across emerging markets who were never brokerage clients, and the local brokers, correspondent banks, and fund distributors who charged for that access are the ones getting disintermediated.

🚀 Build credibility. Drive pipeline. Win in digital assets. We produce institutional-grade research that positions you as the authority in your category, then distribute it to 100,000+ decision-makers who act on what we publish.[let's talk →].

Senate reaches stablecoin yield deal, unblocks crypto bill

Senators Tillis (R) and Alsobrooks (D) cut a deal on stablecoin yield after months of nothing happening. Here's what they agreed to: no passive yield on stablecoin balances. Nothing "economically equivalent to interest." But rewards tied to actual activity, transactions, loyalty, platform use, those stay legal. The SEC, CFTC, and Treasury get twelve months to figure out where to draw the line.

Also, the White House completed its review of a Labor Department rule that could formally permit digital assets inside the $10 trillion 401(k) market, a signal that the administration’s crypto-friendly posture is moving on multiple fronts simultaneously. [RELEASE]

Why this matters: The American Bankers Association argued that unregulated stablecoin yield could siphon $6.6 trillion in deposits, and the framework signals how much weight the banking lobby still carries across a $316 billion stablecoin market. Circle fell 20% in a single session, wiping $5.6 billion in market cap; Coinbase dropped 11%, with stablecoin revenue representing roughly 20% of its quarterly income. The passive yield ban would be the price crypto platforms pay for the rest of the bill to move forward. The Senate Banking Committee markup is targeted for late April, but Senator Bernie Moreno has warned: if the Clarity Act does not reach the Senate floor by May, crypto legislation risks going dark until after the midterm cycle.

Read our past coverage on Clarity Act and stablecoin bills👇

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Nasdaq and NYSE bring crypto in-house, on different terms

Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange both moved to bring crypto infrastructure inside their core platforms this week. They picked different partners because they have different theories about what’s happening. Nasdaq integrated Talos‘s digital asset tools into Calypso, its risk and collateral system used by banks, hedge funds, and asset managers globally, targeting an estimated $35 billion in excess collateral stuck in non-interest-bearing accounts because crypto and traditional systems don’t talk to each other. NYSE named

171: NYSE and Nasdaq pick sides