Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team

Nothing prepares you for a month where the Fed buys its own debt, the US military is running a Bitcoin node, and the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calls crypto "very important payment rails” for the country.

The Senate Banking Committee was supposed to mark up crypto legislation this month, but the date was delayed until May.

“If we don’t get the Clarity Act passed by May, digital asset legislation will not pass for the foreseeable future.”

— United States Senator Bernie Moreno

On top of that, we saw one of the biggest blow-ups in DeFi. We’ve watched a lot of them, but this one’s different.

These are our highlights this week:

* Why Treasury’s record buyback matters to USDT

* Congress just rewrote Fed access rules

* The $196M hole Aave didn’t code

* Singapore just flanked PAXG with a bank

* DTCC front-runs Crypto to own tokenized Wall Street

* Japan’s banks ditch Euroclear for Canton JGB repo

And 15+ more signals. Let’s jump in 👇

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Top Boardroom Reads

* How the U.S. Weaponized the Dollar (And Stablecoins), with Eddie Fishman, New York Times Bestseller (51)

* 2026 Institutional Investor Survey on Digital Asset Investment Trends (Nomura)

* How tokenised assets transform liquidity management (Deutsche Bank)

* CLARITY Act Update: Final Push Ahead (Galaxy)

* Tokenized collateral goes global (ValueExchange)

* Adopting AI Agents in Banking (Creatio)

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

Why Treasury’s record buyback matters to USDT

On April 16, 2026, the U.S. Treasury executed a record $15 billion debt buyback, matching the largest single-day operation in the program’s history. The operation targeted off-the-run nominal coupon securities maturing between May 2026 and April 2028, with settlement on April 17. The Treasury funded the repurchase through new bill issuance, keeping overall debt stock largely unchanged, but shifting the duration profile toward the short end of the curve. [NEWS]

Why it matters: Tether’s $141.6B in Treasury exposure as of Q4 2025 makes it the 18th-largest holder of U.S. government debt on the planet. The company printed more than $10 billion in net profit in 2025 almost entirely on T-bill yield. A buyback that absorbs off-the-run coupons and recycles them into bill issuance is, mechanically, a subsidy to Tether’s business model: it deepens the market for the exact instrument USDT requires as collateral and keeps front-end yields structurally attractive. Whether the Treasury intends this or not, the effect is symmetric with supporting the peg.

Be smart: Recent BIS research found stablecoin inflows reduce three-month T-bill yields by 2–2.5 bps within 10 days; outflows widen them by 6–8 bps. The buyback is now part of that same feedback loop, on the supply side.

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Congress just rewrote Fed access rules

On April 21, Reps. Kim and Liccardo introduced the PACE Act to establish a federal registration regime for non-bank payment firms, overseen by the OCC. Qualifying firms must hold a state bank or credit union charter, or 40 or more active state money transmitter licenses. Registered firms gain direct access to Fedwire, FedNow, and FedACH, rails historically walled off to chartered banks. [RELEASE] [PDF]

Why it matters: Getting a federal crypto license is nearly impossible for newcomers, and that’s by design. To qualify, a company needs money-transmission licenses in at least 40 states. Only a handful of giant, established companies have bothered to collect that many, think PayPal, Circle, Coinbase, and Western Union. They spent years and millions of dollars building up those licenses. Kraken already got approved through a different route (the Federal Reserve), so this rule doesn’t even affect them. Everyone else, any startup or smaller company trying to enter the market, is simply locked out. They haven’t had the time or money to get 40 state licenses yet.

The $196M hole Aave didn’t code

Nobody hacked Aave last weekend. $196M walked out the door anyway. The attacker forged a message on a bridge next door, minted $292M of fake rsETH, and posted it to Aave as collateral. That’s the problem. [ANNOUNCEMENT]

Why it matters: DeFi lending is not a product. It’s an unpriced insurance contract on every asset listed. Aave’s defense is that its contracts worked. That is true. It is also beside the point. A depositor who supplies WETH to Aave is not just lending to Aave. They are lending into every cross-chain bridge that underpins every collateral asset Aave accepts. LayerZero broke. Kelp’s bridge released unbacked tokens. Aave’s oracle priced those tokens as real. The loss landed on WETH suppliers. The smart contract did its job. The insurance contract was never written, and not a single audit scope covered such incidents.

PRO Analysis:

Singapore just flanked PAXG with a bank

On April 21, 2026, OCBC ($526B in total assets), its asset-management arm Lion Global Investors, and MAS-regulated digital-asset exchange DigiFT launched GOLDX, a security token that provides on-chain exposure to the LionGlobal Singapore Physical Gold Fund ($525.9M in AUM). Tokens are issued natively on Ethereum and Solana. [RELEASE]

Why it matters: The tok...