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Welcome back! The crypto and macro news doesn’t stop.

We found out late yesterday that Coinbase would join the S&P 500 next week — significant for a few reasons. 

On the M&A front, Anchorage Digital yesterday agreed to acquire Mountain Protocol (the company behind the USDM stablecoin). Then this morning, Robinhood said it’s set to buy Canadian crypto platform WonderFi.  

Investment manager VanEck launched its first tokenized fund (Ben gets into the SEC chat about onchain securities). Also below, Casey addresses the latest inflation numbers. Let’s get into it.

More tokenization talk

A day after the SEC’s tokenization-focused roundtable, an asset manager launched its first tokenized fund. We just saw stablecoin-related M&A, too.

First, SEC Chair Paul Atkins reiterated Monday that SEC policymaking “will no longer result from ad hoc enforcement actions.” Yes, the agency italicized “ad hoc” in the transcript.

On tokenization, he likened securities moving onchain to the transition of audio recordings from vinyl records to cassette tapes to digital software.

“Blockchain technology holds the promise to allow for a broad swath of novel use cases for securities, fostering new kinds of market activities that many of the commission’s legacy rules and regulations do not contemplate today,” Atkins said. 

But SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw — not exactly known for her crypto support — essentially told everyone to proceed with caution. 

She questioned how great instant settlement actually is, noting the delay between trade execution and settlement provides for “core market functionalities and protection mechanisms.”

Crenshaw also asked why the SEC — a “tech-neutral regulator” — would focus on blockchain over other types of distributed ledger technologies? 

“And we seem to be doing so before the technology has even been demonstrated as fit for purpose,” she added.

On that point, Crenshaw’s colleague Hester Peirce last week noted the SEC crypto task force is considering an exemptive order to let firms issue, trade and settle eligible tokenized securities. So-called sandboxes “can help regulators think about how existing rules could be adapted to accommodate trading tokenized securities at scale,” Peirce explained.

Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul urged “practical sandboxes” that don’t just test what the tech can do (we know that already) — but that inform legislation/regulations. She stressed too that “consumer opportunity” is as important as consumer protection.   

Kaul joined execs from BlackRock, Nasdaq, Fidelity and others. A second panel included some smaller, DeFi-centric players.

Philipp Pieper, co-founder of RWA protocol Swarm, said in an email that while the SEC’s engagement with TradFi titans validates this segment’s potential, DeFi founders must advocate for permissionless protocols and programmable assets to ensure regulations don’t sideline startups.

“We must prove RWAs’ value with tangible use cases, such as fractional ownership and liquid supply chain assets, to win over regulators and users,” Pieper said. “The sector must build compelling RWA platforms which demonstrate clear cost savings and liquidity solutions.” 

Anchorage, VanEck making moves

Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley (after the news his company would buy Mountain Protocol) said: “Stablecoins are becoming the backbone of the digital economy.”

If stablecoins (with a $230 billion market cap) are like checking accounts (as Tokenized Asset Coalition executive director Johnny Reinsch put it during the roundtable), yield-bearing tokenized money market funds are like savings accounts.

Speaking of which, VanEck is the latest to offer onchain access to US Treasury-backed assets via its new VBILL fund. Available across the Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana blockchains, VBILL facilitates atomic liquidity via Agora’s USD stablecoin (AUSD).

BlackRock’s BUIDL is perhaps the best known tokenized yield fund now. Its assets under management (as you see above) make up roughly 40% of the nearly $7 billion tokenized Treasury space, rwa.xyz data shows. 

Then there’s the opportunity to tokenize public stocks, as well as private equities and credit.

Though stablecoin bill progress has hit a snag in the US, these ongoing SEC talks — even if not Earth-shattering — signal the industry is getting closer to clarity.

— Ben Strack

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This is how much Coinbase shares rallied Tuesday, as of 2 pm ET, after news the crypto exchange would become the first digital asset company to join the S&P 500 index next week. 

Coinbase is set to replace Discover Financial (being acquired by Capital One) in the index on May 19.

Where the Internet’s Next Layer Gets Built

Permissionless IV kicks off June 24 in Brooklyn — the definitive builder conference for the teams scaling infra, deploying in prod, and designing the next era of crypto.

On the table: programmable Bitcoin, crypto x AI, modular infra, and real-world deployment workflows.

On stage: Furqan Rydhan (Thirdweb), Casey Caruso (Topology), Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet), Jeremy Rubin (Judica).

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The consumer price index for April rose 0.2% over the month and 2.3% over the year — marking the lowest annual inflation rate in more than four years. Core CPI (excludes food and fuel prices) also increased 0.2% in April, coming in at 2.8% annually. 

If you’re wondering how April’s inflation figures could have been so tame in the wake of new tariff policies, there are a few reasons. 

First, there historically has been a lag between tariff implementation and inflation rising. In May 2019, tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports were raised from 10% to 25%. A quick note that the increase was supposed to start in January 2019, but was delayed five months. Something to keep in mind as we try to predict what will happen today. 

The May 2019 headline CPI report came in 0.1% higher month over month, compared with a 0.3% increase the month prior. Not too bad. The June 2019 core CPI, however, came in 0.3% higher on the month — the largest monthly increase since January 2018. Used car and truck prices — a decent proxy for tariff impact — increased 1.6% over the month in June 2019. 

The anticipation of higher tariffs also had businesses stocking up their inventories in recent months, which could help delay any price increases passed on to consumers. How long that delay may last, though, is anyone’s guess. 

Plus, a tariff-related decrease in consumer confidence and retail spending likely also contributed to lower prices. 

Markets are still anticipating the Fed will hold interest rates at its next meeting in June. That indicates traders expect the other “tariff shoe,” if you will, to drop.

— Casey Wagner