It’s tokenization summer and even Ken Griffin is feeling the heat. On Monday, his firm Citadel sent a letter to the SEC urging caution on tokenized securities.

The message? Tokenization should be driven by “real innovation”, not “regulatory arbitrage”.

Hard to argue with that take. But while Citadel calls for restraint, the rest of the market is picking up speed. Tokenized derivatives are already gaining traction and “real stocks onchain” may be next.

Case in point: Figma’s newly revised S-1 includes a provision for a brand-new class of “blockchain common stock,” giving its board the green light to issue tokenized shares as soon as the timing and the regulator aligns.

Today, we’ll also talk about:

• Exclusive: Banque de France eyes Ethereum for repo markets

• Inside the Genius Act: The top 8 questions

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Exclusive: Banque de France Eyes Ethereum for Onchain Repo Markets

Repo on Ethereum: According to sources familiar with the matter, Banque de France is developing a prototype for a blockchain-based repo market that runs entirely on public infrastructure. Central bank officials presented the architecture in a closed-door session on July 18 at the Caisse des Dépôts, outlining the use of permissioned lending pools to automate collateralized lending flows between institutions.

Why it matters: Repurchase agreements (repos) are a foundational pillar of modern financial markets, enabling trillions in short-term secured lending. Banque de France identified several structural pressures on existing repo infrastructure, including rising interest rates, the end of the Eurosystem’s TLTRO program, and the lack of efficient intraday liquidity tools, that make a redesign worth exploring.

• More efficient infrastructure: Onchain repos, they argued, could automate settlement, margining, and collateral management through smart contracts, reducing the need for intermediaries.

Notable shift: The focus on building on Ethereum marks a departure from the Banque de France’s previous experiments, which were largely confined to private or permissioned networks. “But so far, these have shown their limits in terms of distribution and interoperability,” several sources close to the matter explained.

Stablecoins over CBDC: The choice of cash leg also reflects a shift in approach. Unlike previous Banque de France experiments that relied on a wholesale CBDC, the prototype leans on stablecoins, with EURCV and USCV, issued by Société Générale’s blockchain arm SG-Forge, under consideration for settlement.

• Tokenized MMFs for collateral: On the collateral side, the Banque de France is in talks with Spiko, a Paris-based fintech operating Europe’s largest tokenized money market fund (EUTBL), which currently manages €241 million in assets.

Powered by Morpho: To enable the core lending logic, the prototype explores the use of Morpho Blue, a modular protocol developed by DeFi startup Morpho Labs, another French player. Its design allows institutions to spin up custom lending vaults with optional KYC.

• Permissioned access: While the solution would be deployed on a public blockchain, access to this repo market would be restricted to whitelisted participants. According to our information, the Banque de France is also working on developing its own permissioning framework. Compliance checks are embedded into smart contract wrappers, allowing verification to travel with the asset, a feature it refers to as “conformité programmable.”

• Deployment under consideration: One unresolved question is whether the forked Morpho protocol will run on Ethereum mainnet or an EVM-compatible Layer-2. “Privacy considerations are still being assessed at this stage,” a source told Blockstories.

Live trials by year-end: Full-scale experimentation is expected to begin by the end of 2025. “Many details still need to be worked out, such as regulatory oversight. But the idea is indeed to build a repo system fully based on a permissionless blockchain, while remaining compatible with the requirements of financial institutions,” a source involved in the planning told Blockstories.

Inside the GENIUS Act: 8 Key Questions on the U.S. Stablecoin Framework

Habemus GENIUS: On July 17, the U.S. House passed the GENIUS Act with a supermajority of 308–122 votes. The following day, President Donald Trump signed it into law.

• Why it matters: The GENIUS Act is the most significant banking regulation since Dodd-Frank in 2010, marking the first time U.S. dollar stablecoins are brought under a clear federal framework.

Q&A: To help you cut through the noise, we’ve answered the 8 most important questions about the GENIUS Act: what it allows, who it empowers, and what comes next.

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Genius Act Q&A

1) Who can issue a U.S.-regulated stablecoin under the GENIUS Act?

Three types of organizations: banks, credit unions, and non-bank financial institutions like fintechs or payment companies.

• Issuers with less than $10 billion in circulation can operate under state-level oversight.

• Once they exceed $10 billion, they must obtain federal approval, either through a new OCC stablecoin charter (for fintechs) or by falling under federal banking regulation (for banks and credit unions).

Circle and Ripple have already started the process by applying to become national trust banks. According to several experts interviewed by Blockstories, many crypto-native firms are expected to follow suit.

2) Can Big Tech and enterprises become issuers as well?

Not directly. The law contains what insiders call a “Libra clause”: Commercial companies must create a separate entity, pass antitrust checks, and get greenlighted. This was designed to prevent another Meta-style attempt to control a global payment layer.

It doesn’t ban corporate involvement but it raises the bar high enough that most will likely opt to white-label infrastructure from regulated issuers (e.g. Paxos, Agora).

3) What’s the reserve requirement?

Stablecoins must be backed 1:1 with cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries. The law also requires strict separation: banks can’t mix stablecoin operations with their regular deposit or lending business. Everything has to be held in a separate, protected structure so users can always redeem their stablecoins.

4) Can users earn yield?

Stablecoin issuers can’t pay interest directly to users. The idea is to keep stablecoins in the payments lane, not competing with bank deposits.

That said, yield can still be offered through third parties like Coinbase is doing on their exchange with USDC. It just can’t come from the issuer itself.

5) Besides consumers, who are the biggest winners?

1. Big banks, at least the ones that move early. They can bank stablecoin issuers, handle repo flows, provide custody, and monetize rails without issuing coins themselves.

2. Asset managers like BlackRock or VanEck also stand to benefit as more stablecoin reserves flow into Treasuries and tokenized money market funds.

3. Fintechs and payments firms can also win if they move fast and execute well.

4. But perhaps the biggest winner is the U.S. government, which just secured a trillion-dollar buyer for its debt.

6) Who’s at risk of losing?

Banks and payment firms that will only continue to rely on legacy infrastructure and captive deposits. As stablecoins unbundle financial services, those unable to modernize risk being left behind.

The same goes for governments that depend on capital controls. Digital dollars now move freely, and blocking them is easier said than done.

7) And what about Circle and Tether?

For the duopoly, the new rules bring both headwinds and tailwinds. They open the door to broader stablecoin adoption, and Circle, already U.S.-aligned, is well positioned to benefit. But with clarity comes real competition, arguably for the first time.

Tether faces a more complex path. CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company is developing a new U.S. dollar stablecoin for institutional users and intends to bring USDT into compliance with the GENIUS Act as a foreign issuer.

8) What’s next? How long until the market sees real change?

Like Europe’s MiCA, the GENIUS Act will roll out in phases. It takes effect on January 18, 2027 (or 120 days after the final rules are issued). A transitional period runs until July 18, 2028, allowing pre-existing issuances. After that, only fully authorized issuers will be permitted to operate.

A conversation with Dierk Wilhelmsmeyer, CEO of Tradevest. On Tuesday, the digital asset infrastructure provider announced a strategic partnership with AllUnity, in which it will serve as custodian, first buyer, and exchange partner for the company’s euro-denominated stablecoin, EURAU.

1. State of Stablecoins (Messari) — A 128 slides long presentation that is both a primer on stablecoins and a forward-looking view of where the ecosystem is heading.

2. The Stable Door Opens (McKinsey) — A strategic guide for financial institutions on how to position themselves in the era of tokenized cash.

3. Joint Custody: Banque de France on Wholesale CBDCs (GK8) — In this podcast episode, Matthieu Herbeau (Banque de France) and Benjamin Duve (GK8) discuss the future of wholesale CBDCs and the unified ledger concept.