Weekly Recap: Tokenized SpaceX Stock Went Live — unevenly

SpaceX opened for tokenized trading Friday with Ondo's SPCXon, a Backpack-issued SPCX on Solana, and Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perpetual all running cleanly. The centralized side broke: Bybit, Binance, and Bitget canceled their tokenized SpaceX allocations after xStocks failed to source underlying shares.

Capital continued to flow into the institutional narrative: Digital Asset closed a $355 million round led by a16z crypto for its institutional Canton Network, and Morpho raised $175 million in one of DeFi's largest-ever funding rounds.

Also this week: Hester Peirce closed out nearly 30 years at the SEC, the last eight as the commission's most consistent crypto dissenter.

Enjoy!

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Top Stories This Week

SpaceX Opens for Public Trading Friday With a Live Crypto Tokenized-Equity Stack Behind It

SpaceX opened for public trading on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX with multiple crypto venues carrying tokenized assets on the same name. The on-chain rolled-out smoothly, including: Ondo's SPCXon, a Backpack’s SPCX on Solana, and Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perp. The exchange-distributed side broke; Bybit, Binance and Bitget canceled their tokenized-SpaceX campaigns after xStocks could not source underlying shares.

Mastercard Opens Card Rails to AI Agents With 30-Plus Crypto Partners

Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), extending its card network to autonomous AI agents with 31 launch partners including Coinbase, RippleX (named the same morning as an agentic-commerce partner), Solana Foundation, Polygon, Aave Labs, and Stellar. The platform credentials registered agents, attaches spending limits and authorization rules, and settles in traditional currencies or stablecoins. Stani Kulechov, founder of launch partner Aave, called the protocol the “credit layer for agentic payments.”

Wall Street Piles Into Digital Asset as Canton Network Draws $355M Round Led by a16z

Digital Asset closed a $355 million round led by a16z crypto for its institutional Canton Network, with HSBC, Apollo, CME, BNP Paribas, ADIA, S&P Global, and Tradeweb among more than 20 participants. The round values the company above $2 billion. The week's parallel institutional moves included Janus Henderson's four-part Ethena partnership and Citi rolling out tokenized private-company shares on SIX Digital Exchange. Canton generated $60.74 million in fees over the past 30 days — ahead of Tron and Ethereum over the same window, per DefiLlama.

Morpho Raises $175M in One of DeFi's Largest-Ever Funding Rounds

Morpho Association closed $175 million co-led by Paradigm, a16z, and Ribbit Capital, with Apollo Funds and VanEck as strategic participants — one of the largest equity raises in DeFi history, valuing the lending protocol at $2 billion. Apollo and VanEck bring TradFi-native distribution; both firms run tokenization roadmaps that need an onchain credit engine underneath. Two days later, Coinbase routed retail USDC deposits through Morpho via Steakhouse-curated vaults — the product validation arrived inside the same week.

Strategy Buys 1,550 BTC for $101M One Week After Selling 32, Cash Reserve Hits $1B

Strategy bought 1,550 BTC for $101 million at a $65,376 average, one week after disclosing its first sale since 2022 — a 32-BTC disposal that funded STRC dividend obligations. The purchase runs the company's count to roughly 845,000 BTC, paid from a $1 billion cash reserve built through STRC preferred issuance and at-the-market common stock sales. BitMine ran the parallel ETH-side trade the same week (127K ETH, $207M); Saylor publicly framed the BTC slide as 'AI capital rotation' to position the playbook.

'Peirce Out': A Decade of Dissent

Hester Peirce closed nearly 30 years at the SEC, capping eight years on the Commission with the farewell remarks she delivered Tuesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Capital Markets Summit. The Defiant's retrospective on her tenure traces a decade of dissents that became the regulator-side voice the industry kept quoting back — from the early Bitcoin-ETF disagreements through Project Crypto and the tokenized-securities innovation exemption she helped shape on the way out.

Other Stories

Ripple Deploys XRPL AI Starter Kit as Mastercard Names It Agentic-Commerce Partner — Ripple released a phased developer toolkit for AI-agent payments on the XRP Ledger in XRP and RLUSD, landing the same morning Mastercard named RippleX an AP4M partner.

Citi Rolls Out Tokenized Private-Company Shares for Wealth and Institutional Clients — Citigroup is tokenizing private-company shares on SIX Digital Exchange infrastructure, with a first transaction complete and eligible clients holding tokenized interests alongside traditional securities in one account.

BitMine Buys 126,971 ETH for $207M at $1,630 Average — BitMine deployed $207 million for 126,971 ETH at a $1,630 average, its largest weekly purchase of 2026, lifting its treasury to 5.54 million ETH — 4.59% of circulating supply.

Janus Henderson Takes ENA Stake, Deploys Into USDe, Explores ETP Distribution in Four-Part Ethena Deal — the $480 billion asset manager disclosed a four-part Ethena deal spanning an ENA stake, USDe treasury deployment, CLO distribution, and joint work on exchange-traded USDe products.

Solana Foundation Launches Frontier Traders, an Institutional Program for $500M+ Volume Firms — the Solana Foundation formalized a VIP tier for firms with $500 million in trailing 30-day DEX volume, debuting the program on SpaceX tokenized equity.

Trending on The Defiant

• Exclusive: Cardano Foundation Recasts Itself as Active Adoption Driver as Hoskinson Pulls Back
• Bitcoin Rises Above $63,000 as Trump Cancels Iran Strikes and Signals Peace Deal
• Arthur Hayes Says Bitcoin Cannot Rally Until the AI Bubble Bursts
• Citrini Research Calls Hyperliquid a Compelling Investment, Citing Nearly Half of All Crypto Token Buybacks
• Coinbase Adds Two USDC Lending Vaults on Morpho, With a Choice of Risk Tier

That's it for today — have a great weekend! If you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends!