🏛️ Straight outta TradFi

Brought to you by:

Your crypto could be considered the next time you apply for a mortgage.

The US Director of Federal Housing, Bill Pulte, said the agency is looking into crypto holdings as a way to calculate mortgage qualifications. 

It could be yet another step in the right direction for crypto. Speaking of which…

🦘 Leaps and bounds

We all know that there’s some serious institutional demand out there, and two announcements made already this week just prove that they’re putting their money where their mouth is. 

In the case of Digital Asset, I mean that literally. The firm behind the Canton Network announced that it raised $135 million in a funding round led by DRW and Tradeweb, but it was some of the participating names that really caught my eye. 

Goldman Sachs, Citadel and BNP Paribas were also investors. Notably, both Goldman and BNP have been partnered with Canton since 2023, well before the tide turned for crypto.

According to a press release, the funding will be used to expand the integration of real-world assets on the network, including “bonds, money market funds, alternative funds, commodities, repurchase agreements (repos), mortgages, life insurance, and annuities.”

"This funding milestone validates the inevitability of what we envisioned years ago: a privacy-enabled public blockchain designed specifically for institutional adoption,” Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz said.

“Canton is already actively supporting numerous asset classes — from bonds to alternative funds — and this raise will accelerate onboarding even more real-world assets, finally making blockchain's transformative promise an institutional-scale reality.”

Then there’s Fiserv’s announcement yesterday, which notably comes on the heels of JPMorgan’s deposit token. 

ICYMI: The payments provider is debuting a bank-friendly stablecoin, FIUSD, that’ll be incorporated into its infrastructure by the end of this year. 

It’ll utilize infra from both Paxos and Circle, and is — interestingly enough — making FIUSD available to clients via Solana. 

“In addition, the company is exploring the use of deposit tokens to maintain the benefits of stablecoins in a more capital-friendly structure for banks. Fiserv is active in discussions with other potential partners to further expand use cases for stablecoins and tokenized deposits, both in the United States and internationally,” the firm added. 

What makes FIUSD bank-friendly, according to the release, is that it can be integrated with a Software Development Kit that is suitable for the customer-facing platforms already offered by Fiserv. It’ll also offer fraud monitoring, risk management and settlement controls for banks so that they can manage compliance. 

Are either of these announcements surprising? I think everyone can see the writing on the wall. However, both of them show that the building blocks are being put in place for a more crypto-focused future for institutions, which is why it continues to be important to watch.

Brought to you by:

Blockdaemon Earn Stack — the all-in-one institutional toolkit for compliant staking and DeFi rewards!

🏛️ SEC-aligned (ISO 27001, SOC 2)
⚡ One integration: No-Code Widget + Unified SDK/APIs across 50+ protocols
🔒 Non-custodial

100% Slashing protection. No more fragmented stacks. No more regulatory guesswork.

• A BNB treasury company, helmed by crypto hedge fund executives, is reportedly in the works, according to Bloomberg. 

• The FTX estate says that 3AC is “owed nothing,” while liquidators seek a $1.53B claim.

• Anthony Pompliano is launching his own publicly-traded bitcoin treasury company.

RWAs with real flow. AI x crypto beyond the whiteboard. Modular infra that’s actually live.

Permissionless IV is where the builders behind all of it meet for 3 days.

📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn