51 Insights - Weekly Briefing

Hey, it’s Marc For years, the story was CeFi vs DeFi. Kraken just blew that up. The exchange is in talks to take a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation. Price: roughly 35,000 ETH (about $71 million) for 250,000 AAVE and a seat on the cap table. Same week, it expanded onchain OTC lending with Maple, pulled tokenized assets into custody with Centrifuge, and moved its Ink chain onto Optimism...

Hey, it’s Marc, For two years everyone’s asked the same stablecoin question: whose logo goes on the coin? Circle or Tether? Banks or fintechs? Wrong question. This week State Street and Fidelity answered the one that actually prints money: who manages the reserves behind the coin. State Street launched a money market fund built solely to hold stablecoin reserves. Fidelity opened one two days later...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team, SpaceX just pulled off the biggest IPO in history. $75 billion raised. A $2 trillion valuation at the open. Shares priced at $135, trading as high as $168.75. Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire before lunch. Here’s the part most people missed: SPCX went live on Solana the same day. Tokenized shares, issued by Backpack Securities, redeemable for the real t...

Hey, it’s Marc For years, the stablecoin debate has been about who issues the token. This week made that debate obsolete. The companies that actually move money for a living stopped arguing about issuance and started building settlement infrastructure together. Three payment networks forming one platform . Four of the biggest U.S. banks building shared tokenized deposit rails . And 1.5 million con...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team I’ve watched plenty of turf wars in this market. Never one like this. Minnesota just made running a prediction market a felony. Punishable by five years in prison. The same week, CFTC filed its proposed rule to govern prediction markets with the White House on Tuesday, and the same afternoon Donald Trump posted that the agency’s “ exclusive authority over Prediction Ma...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team, Before we get into this week’s signals, one thing worth flagging at the top. Karl from Proof of Talk pitched 51 as official research partner for June 2-3. My instinct was to decline. But I met this team for the first time 4 years ago at in Paris, just before they launched. And they've built it into one of the top digital asset conferences of the year: 2,500 attendees...

🚨Coming Monday: BCG’s flagship report on the future of digital assets in banking. 68 pages, and probably the most important report on digital assets in banking this year. 51 got early access. Free download lands May 18. Reserve your copy below. Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team, There is a lot happening in the United States. The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, 15-9. But t...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team, Tuning in from Consensus Miami 2026 this week. The signal was clear: institutions aren’t waiting for the Clarity Act. My key takeaways: * Institutional participation was through the roof (35%, nearly double last year). I’ve never experienced a crypto conference that felt so complete, both with crypto OGs and big institutions present. And for the first time, Morgan Sta...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team, I’ve been to several Bitcoin conferences. This time in Las Vegas, a sitting SEC Chair showed up. So did the Vice President. Here’s what you need to know: * Paul Atkins became the first SEC Chair ever to address a Bitcoin conference. He unveiled ACT (Advance, Clarify, Transform) and published a token taxonomy that puts four of five categories (digital commodities, coll...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team Nothing prepares you for a month where the Fed buys its own debt, the US military i s 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...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. I’ve watched banks lobby Washington for 100 years to keep their Fed access exclusive. This week, Deutsche Börse skipped the lobby and bought a seat. Deutsche Börse paid $200M for a 1.5% stake in Kraken, hours before Kraken confirmed it filed for a US IPO. The real story wasn’t the valuation discount. It’s what Kraken’s Kansas City Fed account gives Deutsche Börse: a p...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. A sanctioned country just made Bitcoin a toll booth for 20% of the world’s oil. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. About a fifth of global oil moves through it every day. After the 40-day war with the US and Israel ended in ceasefire on April 8, Iran started charging $1 per barrel in Bitcoin. Pay or you don’t pass. [NEWS] Why Bitcoin? Iran can’t use dollars. Can’t us...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. I don't think Washington has ever shipped this much crypto policy in a single week. Each one would normally be the headline. * The US Labor Department proposed allowing Bitcoin in 401(k) plans, opening digital assets to $7.7 trillion in American retirement savings. * US Congress advanced a payment stablecoin framework, pushing dollar-backed digital currencies closer t...

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...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. The SEC did something this week that people will look back on. * They issued a 68-page joint interpretation on token classifications together with the CFTC, for the first time in 183 years of combined existence. * Chairman Atkins proposed a principles-based framework, replacing stock-market checklists with broad standards like disclosure and investor protection. * Dir...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. NYSE picked OKX. Nasdaq picked Kraken. America's two largest stock exchanges are now both building tokenized equities through crypto-native settlement partners, and neither picked a bank. Also this week, the SEC and CFTC signed a historic MOU to coordinate on digital asset oversight, with Chairman Atkins pushing for a unified framework including joint product reviews....

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. T he SEC submitted a proposal outlining how securities laws apply to crypto. This means: SEC won’t wait for Congress. And Washington is betting on private stablecoins and regulated crypto. [ SEC ] More on that below. Here are our highlights this week: * ICE (NYSE’s parent) invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation , with plans to let OKX users trade tokenized NYSE-li...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. Welcome back to your weekly briefing. The US stablecoin regulation is maturing. The OCC just proposed new rules to put guardrails around stablecoins (digital money tied to the U.S. dollar), following the GENIUS Act that passed last year. The rules cover everything from who can issue them to how they must be backed and managed. [ RELEASE ] 👉 Join the 51 live session w...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. Welcome back to your weekly briefing. Here's where we are: * BTC is holding around $67K with the broader market steady near ~$2.3T. Polymarket odds for BTC reaching up $75K in February sit at 15%. * Institutions kept averaging into the drawdown: BitMine bought 45,759 ETH ($90M), while Strategy added 2,486 BTC ($168M). * Now, DeFi had an interesting week. Strong announ...

Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. After last week’s brutal sell-off that pushed BTC toward the low around $60k (2024 level), the market has finally staged a calm. Institutions are back in business buying the dip; * BitMine bought 40,613 ETH ($79M) while Strategy added 1,142 BTC ($90M). * Binance ’s Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) added about 8,770 BTC ($600M). * Goldman Sachs ’ recent SEC filing sh...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. What a week, folks – and only in crypto. We have a packed newsletter for you today to untangle everything that happened. In case you missed it: Bitcoin crashed 30% in 7 days below $60K (is not already back at $70K) amid a brutal market-wide crash that wiped over $1T in value and lead $5B+...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team. While Blackrock took a quiet $100M stake in Canton, BitGo IPO’d at $2B and Tether launched its US stablecoin USAT, the biggest shift in crypto this week came from Capitol Hill: “Advancing this bill brings us closer to a U.S. regulatory framework that protects consumers while allowing Amer...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hey, it’s Marc . Davos is usually where the establishment pats itself on the back. This year, they looked over their shoulder. Suddenly, crypto isn’t a “scam” , but national defense. And the bankers who spent a decade mocking it? They are panic-buying the infrastructure. Jamie Dimon (and others) are realizing that if...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hey, it’s Marc . Big week for crypto regulation: The industry just shot itself in the foot. “We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill.” — Brian Armstrong , CEO and Co-founder of Coinbase Twenty-four hours before Congress was set to vote on the most comprehensive crypto bill in U.S. history, Coinbase pulled its support...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.51insights.xyz Hey, it’s Marc . 2026 didn’t wait. Last week, we shared our top 12 narratives for 2026. Seven days later, the market started confirming them. On January 5, Bank of America opened the door for 15,000 advisors to recommend Bitcoin ETFs. Forty-eight hours later, Morgan Stanley crossed a bigger line: filing to launch its...