[███░░░░]: Blue Wave, Green Shoots: Election Night, the Binance Hack, and Hyperliquid Goes Mainstream

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 663 relevant tokenization news stories from the week, analyzed the key stories on our weekly podcast, then distilled what you need to know into a few hundred words in this newsletter. Delivered to your inbox in time for Friday happy hour in NYC (usually).

Democrats took both chambers of Congress this week, and the reaction across crypto was swift: Clarity is dead for this Congress, the SEC’s open seats look different now, and the friendliest stretch of Washington policy this industry has had is probably ending. For a lot of tokens, that’s a real problem. For tokenization, it isn’t.

Stablecoins are already law under GENIUS. Tokenized funds and equities fall under the same securities rules as the assets they represent. Neither depends on who holds the gavel. They depend on whether they’re useful, and the numbers say they are: tokenized RWAs crossed $40 billion this week, and Benji passed $1 billion.

Programmable finance keeps going. If tighter politics pushes out the meme coins, the rug pulls, and the products built mainly to make insiders rich, the technology comes out stronger. Here’s what moved this week.

But first, let's take a look at the metrics.

Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz)

📈 RWA market cap was up WoW, finally crossing the $40 billion milestone
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: Benji added $330M, crossing $1B total (largely on Stellar)
🏆 Biggest network winner: Stellar added $500M, rising to $4.4B total

📈 Stablecoin market cap was down ~1.5% WoW to $283 billion, with outflows of more than $10 billion — potentially the largest single-week outflow in the podcast's history
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: Ethena added $50M
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added $120M

📈 Onchain risk free rates:
Short term treasuries (1m): 3.94%
Aave / DeFi: 4.60% (significant uptick, driven in part by the Binance hack and resulting collateral movements)

Stories we're tracking this week

A big week for tokenization infrastructure, geopolitical shocks, and the slow mainstreaming of onchain finance.

• Centrifuge and Janus Henderson launched JQQQ, the first issuer-sponsored natively tokenized Nasdaq 100 fund, debuting exclusively on Stellar. Unlike tokenized wrappers or synthetics, JQQQ is a natively tokenized share class of broad-based Nasdaq 100 exposure managed by a major institutional asset manager. It's the template for how issuer-engaged tokenized equity should work and marks another significant first for the Stellar network.
• ICE entered a joint venture with TradeXYZ to bring 24/7 perpetuals markets to US retail investors, with ICE taking a minority stake and serving as exclusive operator of the regulated clearing structure. The product covers indices, commodities, and equities, mirroring CME's scope but with round-the-clock access. This is a direct move to reshore the significant offshore volume that Hyperliquid currently generates beyond US regulatory reach.
• CFTC Chair Selig announced that single-stock perps would be cleared under official CFTC policy, with Kalshi first to file under the new framework. The ruling formalizes a product category that has until now existed almost entirely offshore. Zero-day options have already crossed 50% of all US options trading volume, and perps offer retail investors a simpler leverage interface. The market shift toward 24/7 trading is accelerating.
• Binance was hit by a record $6.3 billion hack attributed by the FBI to North Korea's hacking unit, allegedly executed through a social engineering honeypot targeting an internal engineer's laptop. Circle and Tether moved to freeze roughly $3 billion in stablecoins connected to the attack; approximately $3 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum remains moving onchain. Binance has committed to covering all losses from company reserves, and the event drove the massive stablecoin outflows and onchain rate spike seen in this week's KPIs.
• 54 of 62 companies opted out of the SEC's tokenized stock innovation exemption, leaving eight on the list including Strategy, Robinhood, Coinbase, Supermicro, Palantir, Circle, TAC member Securitize, and Bitco. The opt-outs reflect issuers' desire for more control over how their shares trade onchain, not opposition to tokenization in principle. The remaining eight, particularly Supermicro and Palantir as the non-crypto-native entries, signal genuine forward-looking interest in natively tokenized equity.
• Democrats swept both chambers in the 2026 midterm elections, effectively ending near-term prospects for the CLARITY Act and similar crypto regulatory clarity legislation. For tokenization specifically, the impact is limited: stablecoins are already enshrined in law under the GENIUS Act and tokenized assets inherit the regulatory framework of their underlying asset. The bigger watch item is whether the new Congress takes a more aggressive posture toward DeFi venues that underpin some of the more innovative onchain use cases.

Tweet of the week

"1.4 million addresses now hold stocks on Solana"
-- @solana (Solana)

Blue Wave, Green Shoots

This week on The First Trillion, Johnny and Charlie covered a lot of ground from the Cayman Islands and Williamsburg respectively. They broke down what the Democratic sweep of Congress actually means for the tokenization industry (less than you might fear), dug into the mechanics and market impact of the $6.3 billion Binance hack, analyzed the ICE x TradeXYZ joint venture and the CFTC's single-stock perps ruling, gave a thorough read on the innovation exemption opt-out wave and what Goldman's objection to perpetuals.com signals, and celebrated Centrifuge and Janus Henderson's launch of the JQQQ, the first issuer-sponsored natively tokenized Nasdaq 100 fund on Stellar.

The episode is available below and we've summarized it for you here.

Stay ahead of the curve

Be sure to follow us on X, LinkedIn, and Spotify for real-time updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and the occasional hot take that didn't make it into the Progress Bar or the First Trillion podcast episode or summary.

Until next week,

The TAC Team