tl;dr
Tokenisation of all financial assets is happening, right here, right now.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
Nick from CryptoQuant made this comment yesterday:
“Bitcoin's 24% rally stalled at $81.4K, just under the 365-day MA at $82.3K — the line that's marked every bull market start.”
The 365-day MA may be important to some people, but it means nothing to me. What is more interesting is that yesterday alone there were $730mm inflows into the spot BTC ETFs, motivated partly by all the indications out of the US that the money-printers are starting to go brr again.
There are approximately 1m BTC held by short-term holders with an on-chain cost basis between $83,000 and $85,000. Those could be speculative, they could be additions to the wallets of whales, or they could be new investors who are convinced by the fundamental value of BTC, or some mix thereof.
The ease or otherwise of breaking through $85k will tell a lot over the next week or so.
Meanwhile, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s state pension fund valued at $2.3tn and worth $400k or so per inhabitant, has proposed cutting its exposure in its bond holdings to government debt. The pressure to reintroduce QE, disguised or otherwise, grows by the day. As an aside, here in the UK, we could have had a suitably substantial wealth fund if we hadn’t simply cashed out all those oil and gas tax receipts for the last fifty years or so.
Occasional Series – Interregnum
With August out of the way, the CCC has been back on track for daily publication.
Sadly, I must tell you there will now be a two-day hiatus as tomorrow I will be on set for a short film in which I have to suddenly and unannounced stand up at a community meeting to sing and play the guitar. Fortunately, the brief requires my character to do that badly, so this is likely to be my most natural on-camera performance bar none. On Sunday, we have an all-day rehearsal for the next Alternative Miss World, this time at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is going to be a magical experience for everyone.
See you Monday.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Tokenisation
Tokenisation is happening today:
Those are some impressive growth numbers. Note that this graph excludes the largest sector for tokenisation to date – stablecoins, notably USDT and USDC. USDC will likely become the de facto means of settling dollar payments globally in just a few years’ time, totalling trillions of dollars a day, to the benefit of shareholders of Coinbase Inc. amongst others.
Robinhood launched a decentralised tokenised stock service on Robinhood Chain using Uniswap as its front-end:
The functionality is the same as crypto-swapping on a DEX – connect your wallet (probably MetaMask protected by Ledger Nano Flex) – swap stablecoins or other cryptos for your stock choice, which is then reflected in your crypto wallet (*). I know it looks daunting if you have never used DeFi before but, honestly, it’s a piece of cake.
What you will notice is that for say SPCX (SpaceX) there is more than just one option which I agree is confusing. The different choices are much the same thing, just native to a different underlying blockchain. The prices are all very similar – if they were not, the arbitrageurs would move in very quickly – but they will each have differing liquidity. The tokenised stock on Robinhood Chain will very likely be the most liquid, so stick with that.
Cumulative volume of tokenised stocks traded on Robinhood Chain reached $1bn by August 21st, just fifty-two days after launch. Pretty impressive, huh? Less than two weeks later, by September 2nd, volumes had trebled to $3bn. I think we know which way that number is now heading.
If anyone had any doubts as to why UNI, Uniswap’s governance coin, has rallied nearly 40% in the last week, now you know:
For disclosure purposes, the CC Treasury has been accumulating UNI (with secure third-party storage off-site from CC Towers requiring multiple signatures) since the beginning of August 2026 for just this reason. Obviously, that is not financial advice, merely disclosure, and there is no guarantee that such out-performance continues any longer.
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Coinbase is doing much the same thing, using its own blockchain Base (no native token yet, but come on, that will surely change one day) and Aerodrome, a DeFi front-end like Uniswap.
For now, there are only four tokenised shares to trade using Base – Nvidia, Apple, Meta, and Alphabet (natch) plus a pool of the MAG7 – but we know that will quickly change. If you have mastered the art of using crypto wallets in the DeFi space, this is no different.
The tokenisation mechanism however is different for these two options.
Coinbase tokenises stocks with audited collateral of the underlying share. Robinhood issues the tokenised stock as a debt security from its Jersey entity. The former looks more like the spot ETFs with which we are so familiar. The latter are more like the ETPs and ETNs that are so popular in Europe. The relative performance of each one will not differ greatly, though with Robinhood you have added counterparty risk, and a greater liquidity risk during times of market stress. ETNs are often designed for investors to hold to maturity. ETPs are broader ranging but can hide a multitude of sins.
I suspect that most Robinhood users will never understand the difference between these structures underpinning tokenised stocks, with little to no enthusiasm for doing so.
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(*) Final point – my agentic Compliance Officer insists I add a qualification to today’s commentary:
“There is, of course, a distinction between technical access to a public onchain pool and an investor’s formal eligibility under the issuer’s terms. Robinhood says its Stock Tokens are restricted in the UK and certain other jurisdictions. That does not stop a UK user from seeing the chain or its liquidity; it does mean that readers should do their own work on the product terms, local rules and the availability of redemption before treating a wallet-held token as equivalent to a directly owned share.”