Polymarket secured CFTC approval to re-enter U.S. markets. Kalshi raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation just weeks after closing a $300 million round. Coinbase is preparing to launch its own prediction-market product, while Robinhood is extending its offering through a Susquehanna-backed joint venture operating a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse. The bull case would see prediction markets restructuring how sophisticated investors price information and express conviction. Below, we explore why the peer-to-peer model matters and what institutional capital sees in this infrastructure build.

October’s $40 billion liquidation event was a sharp reminder of how quickly crypto’s leverage infrastructure can unwind - and how fast stress can propagate in markets that operate 24/7. It also arrived at a moment when US policymakers are advancing the most consequential regulatory reforms the industry has seen, from the GENIUS Act to the proposed CLARITY Act. This week, we examine how emerging market-structure legislation could reshape the foundations of the industry, and we revisit the mechanics behind the 10 October forced-deleveraging to understand what it revealed about the current state of crypto market structure.

What unlocked the great exchange consolidation of 2007-2013? Regulatory clarity. Once CME and ICE knew the rules, they went on buying sprees, building full-stack infrastructure that dominates markets today. Eighteen years later, crypto is hitting the same inflection point. The M&A activity breaks down into three clear patterns: firms building complete vertical integration, bridges between crypto and traditional finance, and strategic acquisitions of profitable niche players. This week alone, Coinbase paid $375 million for Echo, while FalconX moved to acquire 21Shares - two deals that, on the surface, seem unrelated but share the same underlying driver. Crypto consolidation season has arrived.

This week, Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $2 billion into Polymarket at an $8 billion valuation this week. The deal structure matters: ICE becomes Polymarket's global data distributor and partner on tokenization initiatives. This is TradFi backing a crypto-native product that already works, then helping scale it to mainstream users. As DACM's CIO Richard Galvin put it on stage at Singapore Token2049 last week, crypto needs to move from "hundreds of thousands inside the crypto sandbox" to "hundreds of millions of users" beyond it.

This week, we're on the ground at Korea Blockchain Week, one of Asia’s largest crypto conferences. The DACM team has been meeting with current portfolio companies, emerging projects, and investor peers. A key theme throughout the week has been stablecoins, which Tom Threlfall explores in more detail below.

Stripe's announcement of Tempo, a "payments-oriented Layer 1" built in partnership with Paradigm, reads like a masterclass in corporate blockchain strategy. Optimized for high-throughput payments, denominating fees in fiat currencies, and backed by an impressive roster of high-profile investors. The problem it solves appears real. Yet it feels like it falls into the "intranet trap" where established institutions recreate centralized versions of technology rather than valuing the network effects.

Financial markets have an uncanny ability to rediscover the same structures under new names. Today's Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies—from Strategy's pioneering model to the dozens of new entrants flooding NASDAQ—are following a remarkably familiar playbook. For those who witnessed the Listed Investment Company (LIC) and Listed Investment Trust (LIT) booms of previous decades, the current DAT phenomenon isn't revolutionary finance. It's history rhyming with stunning precision.

What's stopping institutions from investing in crypto?" Over eight+ years of conversations with sophisticated and institutional investors, DACM's Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, Richard Galvin, has heard the same three concerns surface repeatedly: Systemic risks – particularly around Tether's USDT and stablecoin backing; Unclear revenue models – tokens are simply too difficult to value; Regulatory uncertainty – and in some jurisdictions, outright hostility.

This week, we dive into Ethena ($ENA), the synthetic stablecoin project whose recent interest exposes a fundamental shift in how institutional capital views crypto infrastructure. While corporate crypto treasuries have historically focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum as digital stores of value, StablecoinX's $360 million commitment to building an $ENA treasury represents the first major bet on protocol governance itself—signalling that sophisticated investors now see DeFi infrastructure as investable assets rather than speculative experiments.

This week, we examine recent structural changes to Ethereum. As institutional supply dynamics shift and ETF flows accelerate, we explore how "hated rallies" often provide the best risk-adjusted returns for institutional allocators, and why sometimes the simplest supply-demand math matters more than complex technological narratives.

This week's passage of the GENIUS Act and Clarity bills through the House marks a watershed moment for crypto's institutional future. As regulatory clarity emerges, we explore how sustainable DeFi applications like Maple Finance are scaling and beating traditional competitors. Following last week's discussion and Pump's successful $500 token sale, we examine how established dominance can shift within weeks, as an alliance between DACM portfolio companies Graphite Protocol, Raydium, and BONK, challenge pump.fun's historical supremacy in a battle that blends genuine platform value with extraction concerns.