[███░░░░]: Tokenized securities clarity (not that kind)

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 229 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.

The regulatory rulebook is finally getting written. This week the SEC issued comprehensive tokenized securities guidance signed by three divisions, Tether launched their US-compliant USAT stablecoin, Circle unveiled StableFX for instant FX trades, and the ECB announced they'll accept tokenized collateral starting in March.

📈 RWA market cap was up 5% WoW to $24 billion
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: USDY added 10%
🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added 6% to nearly $15B in RWA

📈 Stablecoin market flat at $296 billion
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: USD1 up 55% to $4.9B
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added $200M (to $14.3B total)

📈 Onchain risk free rates:

• Short term treasuries (1m): 3.7%
• Aave / DeFi: 5% (+110 bps WoW!)

Stories we're tracking this week

• The SEC issued comprehensive guidance on tokenized securities, with three divisions (Corporate Finance, Investment Management, and Trading & Markets) all signing off. The guidance covers issuer-sponsored tokenized securities, third-party custodial models, synthetic structures, and security-based swaps, while explicitly encouraging market participants to engage early. This is exactly the regulatory posture the industry has been requesting.
• Tether launched USAT, their US-compliant stablecoin issued through Anchorage (with that coveted OCC license) and reserves managed by Cantor Fitzgerald. The stablecoin wars are heating up as Tether enters Circle's home turf.
• Circle announced StableFX on ARC, an FX RFQ system enabling instant trades between USDC, EURC, and partnered regional stablecoins. By curating regional stablecoin partners, Circle is king-making non-USD issuers while building network effects that make their infrastructure stickier.
• The European Central Bank will begin accepting tokenized assets as collateral starting in March, becoming the first major central bank to take this concrete step. While likely limited to private chains initially, this de-risks the technology for everyone else.
• Binance announced they're relaunching tokenized stock trading, four years after regulatory pushback shut down their first attempt. The timing aligns with the SEC's new guidance, and every major exchange is now positioning for this volume.
• Bitwise launched their first DeFi vault on Morpho, calling on-chain vaults "ETFs 2.0." Meanwhile, Gauntlet crossed $1 billion in vault TVL, highlighting the convergence between traditional asset managers and DeFi.
• Zero Hash walked away from their reported ~$2 billion Mastercard acquisition, instead raising at a $1.5 billion valuation to maintain independence.

Want more analysis? We go through each story in more depth on our weekly podcast, now called The First Trillion. A discussion between Johnny and Charlie about the news highlights from the week, and sometimes some alpha that's never investment advice (we can't stress that enough).

Charlie survived the New York snowpocalypse while Johnny enjoyed 70-degree LA weather. This week delivered the regulatory clarity tokenization has been waiting for, with actual guidance from three SEC divisions. We made bold predictions on USAT's trajectory (Charlie says $20B by year end, Johnny's at $10B), pitched a Tether Gold rewards card that will never exist but absolutely should, and watched the DTCC release a normie-friendly tokenization explainer that would have been unfathomable a few years ago.

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

Stay ahead of the curve

Quick note about our recent release schedule being on the last two Saturdays. I generally target Friday afternoons for publishing and have also been experimenting with video editors for the pod. Still calibrating on the editing pipeline and appreciate your bearing with me over the last couple Progress Bars coming out a day later than usual. The good news is the quality of the audio / video edits of The First Trillion is 10x.

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 TACo Time episode or summary.

Until next time,

The TAC Team