Macro Update

Last week, Bitcoin marked a weekly close of $94,300, against the backdrop of $1.8 billion inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs. Concurrently, Strategy purchased 15,355 BTC for $1.42 billion, funded by proceeds from selling 4,020,000 MSTR shares for approximately $1.4 billion and 435,069 STRK shares for approximately $37.5 million. These sales are part of Strategy’s “21/21 Plan”, a three-year strategy launched in October 2024 to raise $42 billion, split evenly between equity and fixed-income securities, to fuel Bitcoin acquisitions. After last week’s transactions, $128.7 million in MSTR shares and $20.9 billion in STRK shares remain available under this plan. Building on this, Strategy also announced an ambitious expansion of its “42/42 Plan,” doubling its capital-raising target to $84 billion, with $42 billion allocated to equity and $42 billion to fixed-income securities.

Visa has partnered with Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure startup recently acquired by Stripe, to introduce a card-issuing product linked to stablecoin balances. This offering allows cardholders to make purchases at Visa-accepting merchants worldwide, with Bridge’s backend converting stablecoins into local fiat currencies for merchant settlements. The initiative initially targets Latin American markets, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Chile, where currency volatility drives demand for stable digital payment solutions, with plans for broader expansion into Europe, Africa, and Asia. Complementing this effort, Mastercard has launched a framework to integrate stablecoin transactions into its global network, including USDC and USDP (both regulated by the NYDFS). Through partnerships with platforms like OKX and Nuvei, Mastercard enables consumers to spend stablecoins via cards and digital wallets, offering merchants the flexibility to settle in either stablecoins or fiat. Its Crypto Credential system enhances security for on-chain remittances, while the Multi-Token Network supports real-time payments and tokenized asset settlements, signaling a growing convergence of traditional finance and blockchain technology.

Meanwhile, Robinhood’s cryptocurrency segment reported $252 million in transaction-based revenue for Q1 2025, a 30% decline from the record $358 million in Q4 2024, driven by a 35% drop in trading volumes from $71 billion to $46 billion. This contraction reflects broader market consolidation, yet crypto revenue accounted for 43% of Robinhood’s total transaction-based revenue, the largest share among all asset class offerings. This dominant share underscores crypto’s influence in driving platform engagement, potentially spurring Robinhood to enhance its crypto offerings or tailor features to crypto-centric customer interests to capitalize on this thriving market.

On the macro front, the PCE index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose by 2.3% year-over-year in March, down from 2.5% in February, signaling easing inflationary pressures. Likewise, the core PCE index, excluding volatile food and energy prices, increased by 2.6%, aligning with economists’ expectations. In the labor market, the US economy added 177,000 jobs in April, exceeding forecasts of 138,000, reflecting resilience despite tariff concerns, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, as expected. However, March’s jobs figure was revised downward from 228,000 to 185,000, indicating caution in hiring amid initial tariff disruptions. Tariffs triggered a rush to stockpile goods, driving a 5% surge in imports to $343 billion in March, with consumer goods imports soaring 28% to a record $103 billion as companies preempted higher costs. Exports grew modestly by 1% to $181 billion, widening the goods trade deficit by $14 billion month-over-month to a record $162 billion. This trade imbalance, fueled by tariff-driven import spikes, directly contributed to a 0.3% GDP contraction in Q1 2025, marking the first decline since Q1 2022. Amid escalating trade tensions, China has reportedly compiled a list of US goods exempt from its 125% tariffs, including ethane, select semiconductors, and certain pharmaceuticals.

Our take: Markets appear choppy ahead of two major catalysts over the next fortnight: this week’s FOMC meeting, where the Fed’s tone, hawkish to curb trade war inflation or dovish to spur growth, and the May 14 CPI report, which will show how tariffs are hiking consumer prices- consequently either steadying or unsettling markets.

L1 Update

Solana recorded the highest onchain DEX volume in April ($71 billion), a 33% increase from March’s $53 billion, outpacing Ethereum’s $56 billion. This surge is primarily driven by memecoin trading and the launch of memecoin generator platforms, positioned as competitors to pump.fun. Boopdotfun, founded by NFT collector Dingaling, with its $BOOP token reaching a $500 million market cap before retracing to $220 million. However, its momentum quickly faded, with daily active addresses dropping 90% from 30,000 to 3,000 and tokens created falling from 10,000 to 1,500 within four days. Boopdotfun directs a portion of its fees to liquidity pools and creator rewards, similar to other platforms in the space. On the other hand, LetsBonk.fun, the other platform that launched recently, reinvests a portion of its fees into the BONKsol validator and BONK token burns, while allocating 10% of liquidity pool fees post-migration to creators and 10% biweekly rebates on SOL fees from bonding curves.

Another blockchain demonstrating a surge in on-chain activity is Sui, with its monthly DEX trading volume rising 57% from $7 billion in March to $11 billion in April 2025, positioning it among the top five blockchains for DEX activity. This growth was driven by significant increases in TVL and stablecoin supply, which bolstered liquidity across Sui’s DeFi ecosystem. Since the tariff pause on April 9, TVL in Sui’s ecosystem surged 70% from $1.4 billion to $2.4 billion. Concurrently, Sui’s stablecoin supply nearly doubled from $480 million to $890 million over the past two months. To further strengthen its DeFi capabilities, Sui announced the integration of Stacks’ sBTC, a synthetic Bitcoin asset designed to enable Bitcoin’s use in smart contracts, aiming to leverage Bitcoin’s liquidity for lending, borrowing, and other DeFi activities, potentially boosting ecosystem adoption. Amid these positive catalysts, the SUI token surged 170% from a monthly low of $1.4 to a peak of $3.8, retracing to $3.4 by the weekend.

Our take: Solana’s recent uptick in onchain activity, fueled by speculative memecoin trading, underscores its strong position in the memecoin sector. Should memecoins maintain their grip on market attention, as seen in recent quarters, Solana could be well-positioned for growth, especially with the institutional interest highlighted last week, akin to Bitcoin accumulation strategies.

Tokenization Update

Last week, BlackRock applied with the SEC to introduce Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) shares for its $150 billion Treasury Trust Fund, a money market fund focused on U.S. Treasury securities. Exclusively distributed through BNY Mellon, these DLT shares require a minimum investment of $3 million for institutional investors, with no minimum for subsequent purchases. To ensure transparency, BNY Mellon will maintain a blockchain-based record of share ownership alongside the fund’s conventional ledger, offering a dual system that bridges traditional and tokenized finance. The filing reflects CEO Larry Fink’s vision, articulated in his 2025 shareholder letter, to leverage tokenization to democratize investment opportunities through fractional ownership, secure digital shareholder rights, and broaden access to yield-bearing assets, signaling a strategic pivot toward blockchain-driven innovation in asset management.

In a parallel development, Libre, an omnichain platform specializing in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, is planning to tokenize $500 million of Telegram’s corporate bonds on The Open Network (TON). This initiative targets institutional investors, offering blockchain-based access to a portion of Telegram’s $2.4 billion in outstanding debt through the Telegram Bond Fund (TBF). Accredited investors can purchase tokenized fund units, gaining exposure to high-yield bonds with returns of up to 9.4%, while integrating these assets into TON’s DeFi ecosystem for use in borrowing, lending, and yield-generating activities. To make DeFi more accessible for institutional investors, Libre will deploy its Gateway infrastructure on TON. This enables compliant subscriptions, redemptions, and transfers of tokenized assets, so investors can easily subscribe to real-world assets (RWAs) using fiat or stablecoins and manage their holdings directly through TON-native wallets. Libre has a proven track record of handling institutional-scale tokenization, having managed over $200 million in assets for firms like BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and Nomura’s Laser Digital across Ethereum and Solana. This experience positions Libre to effectively tap into TON’s scalable infrastructure and Telegram’s 950 million monthly active users to attract more clients and expand its RWA offerings. If successful, this could elevate TON to the third-largest RWA blockchain by tokenized value, trailing Ethereum ($6.2 billion) and ZKsync ($2.2 billion), potentially revitalizing TON’s DeFi ecosystem, which has experienced an 81% decline in TVL from a 2024 peak of $750 million to $140 million.

Reflecting the broader tokenization momentum, the tokenized government money market sector, encompassing U.S. Treasury securities digitized on public blockchains, surged 27% from $5.1 billion to $6.5 billion in April 2025. This growth was propelled by a $1 billion investment in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) from Sky (formerly MakerDAO), announced in late March 2025, with allocations to BlackRock’s BUIDL, Superstate, and Centrifuge. Consequently, BUIDL led the sector’s expansion, rising 42% from $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion to capture a 41% market share, while Superstate’s fund soared 63% to $660 million, and Centrifuge’s assets jumped from $30 million to $220 million. Bolstering this momentum, Ondo Finance’s USDY expanded 49% from $390 million to $580 million since February 2025, fueled by its integration on the Stellar network for cost-effective cross-border transfers. Similarly, Ondo’s OUSG grew 149% from $170 million to $424 million since January 2025, supported by its planned deployment on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) in partnership with Ripple for rollout between February and June 2025. Further supporting this momentum, Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network enabled 24/7 redemptions of OUSG for banks, potentially streamlining institutional participation.

Our take: By embedding blockchain infrastructure into the operational core of a $150 billion fund, BlackRock is effectively declaring that tokenization is no longer a sandbox experiment but a viable infrastructure layer for the mainstream financial system. The dual ledger setup, conventional and blockchain-based, acts as a transitional mechanism that may help mitigate regulatory and operational friction while laying the groundwork for broader adoption. If such models gain traction, institutional finance could begin moving from intermediated custodianship toward programmable and transparent ownership frameworks, with implications for auditability, settlement efficiency, and capital formation.