Bitcoin gained ~3% this week to a market capitalization of $1.29T.
Early Riders Media
On this week’s Final Settlement, the team dug into the all-out sprint to tokenize equities and deposits, from the UK task force to Swift's ledger, why the winners are the issuers rather than the users, Anthropic's march toward a mega-IPO, and China closing the model gap.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Strategy raised $467 million in common stock to build a $3 billion cash reserve, buying no Bitcoin.
Morgan Stanley launched spot Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana trading on E*TRADE through a partnership with Zero Hash.
NYSE Arca filed to lift IBIT options position limits from 250,000 to one million contracts, effective on filing.
Orange Juice Holdings launched with $40 million to acquire cash-flowing businesses backed by a Bitcoin treasury, anchored by Ricardo Salinas.
DTCC began a tokenized stocks and Treasuries pilot with nearly 40 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan.
Visa introduced a stablecoin platform for minting, moving, and managing tokens, starting with Open USD in beta.
Alpaca raised $135 million led by Peak XV to scale agent-first brokerage infrastructure for tokenized markets.
Velocity raised a $38 million Series A co-led by Dragonfly and Firstmark to help businesses tap stablecoin payments.
Regulatory & Sovereign Updates
The CLARITY Act entered a critical four-week Senate window before the August recess, with backers putting passage odds at 50% to 70%.
Japan's parliament reclassified Bitcoin as a financial asset, cutting the top tax rate from 55% to 20% and opening a path to spot ETFs.
The ECB selected 36 payment providers for its digital euro pilot, a 12-month test beginning in the second half of 2027.
Russia's State Duma scheduled a bill to regulate Bitcoin and digital assets for second and third readings on July 21, aimed at combating fraud.
What We're Watching: Citadel Securities Buys Into a Second Exchange
Citadel Securities just put $400 million into Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation. It is the exchange's first institutional round in ten years and the second time in eight months that Citadel Securities has valued an exchange at nearly $20 billion, after leading Kraken's round last November. The plan is expansion beyond spot into tokenized securities and derivatives, which happen to be the two markets Citadel Securities already dominates on Wall Street.
Additionally, ICE took a stake in OKX at $25 billion and Deutsche Borse put $200 million into Kraken. Market makers and exchange operators are buying equity in the venues, not just trading on them. Exchange infrastructure is being underwritten as core financial plumbing as Crypto.com holds a full CFTC derivatives stack and has obtained conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank.
Chart of the Week
Wall Street's 12-month forward free cash flow estimate for the hyperscalers peaked near $280 billion in 2024 and has now gone negative for the first time in almost two decades, while the same estimate for the semiconductor companies supplying them has spiked above $420 billion.
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