Divided by Hype, Connected by Payments
AI and blockchain have largely ignored each other. Banks deployed AI to cut costs and automate workflows inside the existing financial system. Crypto built blockchain infrastructure for a parallel one. The two ecosystems talked about convergence at conferences, but investors continued to treat them largely as different parts of the portfolio, assuming they belong to different parts of the economy: buy the AI infrastructure through Nvidia, buy crypto through a bitcoin ETF.
Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul has made the case for paying attention to how these two technologies converge to build future financial systems: Software that buys, books, and pays on your behalf without human sign-off needs rails that settle in seconds, not business days. The only infrastructure that currently does that is blockchain.
Agentic AI will generate transaction volumes that legacy payment networks cannot handle. Visa processes 1,700 to 10,000 transactions per second during normal daily operations, but settles in one to three business days. Blockchain networks like Solana record and settle simultaneously at comparable speeds, removing the latency that makes traditional rails unworkable for machine-speed commerce.
The convergence matters because AI agents need programmable, instant, always-on money. Bank accounts require human authorization loops. Card networks batch and net. Neither was designed for software transacting autonomously thousands of times per hour.
Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenized fund runs on multiple public blockchains. Its 250 Digital acquisition, completed this month, added active digital asset management capabilities. The paper’s conclusion is direct: investors who think Nvidia exposure covers their AI thesis are missing the infrastructure layer where the value will actually be captured.
McKinsey projects agentic commerce at $3 to $5 trillion by 2030. The question is what rails that carry it, and how is it being built.
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Monark Markets Brings Pre-IPO Investing to Webull’s Millions
“87% of companies today in the US doing over $100 million in revenue are private companies,” Monark Markets CEO Ben Haber noted, pointing to why private market access matters more than ever. His answer: don’t wait for the IPO.
Through a new partnership with Webull (NASDAQ: BULL), eligible accredited investors can now access late-stage private companies directly inside the Webull app. Users signal interest, Monark structures a single-company SPV and funding happens on the platform they already trade on removing separate accounts and institutional gatekeepers.
Founded in 2022, Monark Markets has built the rails letting brokerages embed pre-IPO access for names like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Stripe, reaching over 50 million investors across partner platforms. Backed by an $8.1 million round led by F-Prime, Monark is turning an invitation-only asset class into infrastructure any brokerage can plug into.
FINTECH BUSINESS NEWS
US banks and The Clearing House launch a tokenized deposit network to counter stablecoins
Seventeen US banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, BNY, HSBC, and Santander, are building a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting a H1 2027 launch, with 24/7 settlement connecting to TCH’s existing RTP and CHIPS rails.
The network is deliberately structured around bank-issued deposits rather than stablecoins, preserving FDIC insurance and regulatory oversight while matching stablecoin speed. No blockchain vendor, rulebook, or pricing model has been publicly disclosed.
Revolut is now valued at $115B, Europe’s most valuable private company
Revolut priced a secondary employee share sale at $2,017 per share, valuing the company at $115 billion, 53% above its November 2025 secondary valuation of $75B, more than double its 2024 level of $45B, and above Barclays’ ~$95B market cap.
2025 results: $6B in revenue (+46% YoY), $2.3B pre-tax profit (+57% YoY), 75 million customers. IPO discussions have centered on a target valuation of up to $200B. With a US national bank charter application filed, a UK banking licence secured, and UAE and US launches planned for 2027, Revolut is building the case for a public valuation premium to any incumbent bank.
Kalshi launches Midterm Hubs ahead of November
Kalshi launched dedicated Midterm Hubs for the November 2026 US midterm elections, creating structured prediction market interfaces covering every Senate seat, House race, and governor’s contest, giving bettors a single organized venue for congressional prediction markets, backed by Kalshi’s CFTC-registered infrastructure.
The launch arrives as Kalshi’s annualized volume exceeds $2B and following a World Cup in which sports contracts drove 85% of volume, validating that Kalshi can hold user attention between electoral cycles.
Tokenized stocks hit $2.3B across every major venue
The tokenized stock market reached a record $2.3B in market capitalization, with Ondo Finance leading at $955M (42% share), Kraken’s xStocks at $507M, and Binance’s bStocks at $334M. Ethereum holds 34.8% of blockchain share, followed by BNB Chain at 30.2% and Solana at 23.8%.
Growth is being driven by exchange-issued products rather than DeFi protocols, with exchange platforms capturing two of the top three issuer slots for the first time. Robinhood Chain has captured a 0.5% share within weeks of its mainnet launch.
Robinhood Chain overtakes Base on daily active users three weeks after launch
Robinhood Chain surpassed Coinbase’s Base blockchain on daily active users within three weeks of its mainnet launch, reaching 65,000 daily active addresses versus Base’s 52,000, driven largely by memecoin activity rather than the tokenized stocks and institutional DeFi products the chain was designed for.
TVL stands at $320M, with $300M in stablecoins and only $13M in tokenized equities. The metric gap between user counts and tokenized equity adoption is the central challenge for Vlad Tenev’s “institutional crypto” pitch.
Santander reports €87M (~$96M) in quantified AI business growth
Santander disclosed that AI-driven initiatives generated approximately €87M in measurable business uplift across its operations in H1 2026, spanning credit decisioning improvements, fraud reduction, customer service automation, and internal productivity gains.
The figure is one of the first publicly disclosed, quantified AI ROI numbers from a global bank, and is significant because it demonstrates that AI investment is converting into revenue and cost outcomes rather than remaining at pilot stage across the group’s 14 core markets.
POLICY WATCH
Clarity Act text drops, but all seven key Democrats say it falls short
Senate Republicans released the merged Clarity Act text Wednesday, incorporating an ethics provision banning the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, and senior officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets for compensation while in office. However, it includes a sunset clause of January 20, 2029, and enforcement solely through the DOJ.
All seven of the Democratic senators whose votes are mathematically needed for the 60-vote threshold (Gallego, Alsobrooks, Booker, Cortez Masto, Hickenlooper, Warner, and Warnock) issued a joint statement saying the bill “falls short” on ethics, consumer protection, illicit finance, and market integrity.
Alsobrooks called DOJ enforcement “wild and unserious and stone crazy,” calling instead for state attorneys general to have authority. Senate Majority Leader Thune said he intends to bring the bill to the floor regardless, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong calling it “ready for a full Senate vote” and 950,000 contacts backing the push. Polymarket keeps 2026 passage odds at 33%.
SEC’s Peirce: DeFi vaults and onchain lending aren’t necessarily securities-law exempt
In a statement titled “Headstands and Summervaults,” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned Wednesday that crypto vaults and onchain lending strategies are not automatically exempt from federal securities laws simply because they run on blockchain, with the key question being whether a vault or lending strategy involves discretionary management decisions by a third party, which could trigger registration as an investment company or investment adviser.
The $8.6 billion DeFi vault sector, with 788 curated vaults serving 1.4 million users, took notice: Morpho’s token fell 5% on the statement. Peirce urged firms to engage with the SEC proactively rather than trying “headstands, backflips, and other gymnastics” to avoid the law.
DOJ seeks forfeiture of $25 million in crypto linked to romance and investment scams
The DOJ filed civil forfeiture complaints Wednesday targeting approximately $25 million in cryptocurrency linked to pig-butchering romance scams and fraudulent investment platforms, tracing funds through Binance accounts and mixers to shell entities in Southeast Asia.
The action is part of the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force, which has now notified nearly 14,000 victims and prevented an estimated $640 million in losses since 2024; the complaints do not name individual defendants and are civil rather than criminal, allowing the government to seize assets without a conviction.
SEC reporting overhaul draws mixed reviews from Wall Street and Main Street
The SEC’s proposed shift from quarterly to semi-annual earnings reporting is drawing support from small-cap and pre-revenue companies arguing quarterly cycles distort capital allocation and depress IPO appetite, while drawing opposition from institutional investors and pension funds warning that halving the reporting cadence increases information asymmetry between management and the market.
The CFA Institute and Council of Institutional Investors both filed comments opposing the change. The Business Roundtable and several regional chambers of commerce filed in support, and the SEC is expected to finalize the rule by year-end under a comment-to-rule timeline of approximately 180 days.