Just two weeks into 2026, BitMine chairman Tom Lee is already defending his “main character of the year” crown. Yesterday, his company announced a $200 million equity investment in Beast Industries, the holding company behind MrBeast, the world’s most-watched YouTuber.

If you remember BitMine as the largest publicly listed Ethereum treasury company, you’re not mistaken. And while most of its balance sheet is indeed focused on accumulating ETH per share, the firm has set aside 5% for “moonshots.”

The official rationale is to align closely with MrBeast’s plans to build a financial services platform for younger users, with DeFi (and by extension Ethereum) playing a key role in those plans.

Now, as far as option pricing goes, paying up for a slice of goodwill toward Ethereum certainly feels moonshotty. But when that option also comes with a stake in the business of the world’s most influential creator, the bet suddenly looks remarkably terrestrial.

Today, we’ll also talk about:

• Clarity Act takes a sharp turn

• Polygon announces $250 million acquisitions to advance stablecoin strategy

• Spiko secures MiFID investment firm license

New report: This week we published our most interesting piece of research to date: “The Year Ahead in Digital Assets: 25 Expert Outlooks for 2026”. You can access it here for free.

Market Structure Bill Markup Postponed After Coinbase Pulls Backing

Big week: What was shaping up to be a pivotal week for U.S. crypto regulation took an unexpected turn on Wednesday. After months of bipartisan negotiations, momentum around the market structure bill stalled when Coinbase withdrew its support for the Senate Banking Committee’s long-awaited draft, citing unresolved concerns around DeFi, privacy, and stablecoin yield.

• Why it matters: The market structure bill is the most anticipated piece of crypto legislation in the U.S. It offers long-awaited legal certainty by defining key terms around digital assets and DeFi and dividing oversight between the SEC and CFTC. Crucially, by anchoring definitions in statute, the bill would limit regulatory discretion and significantly reduce sensitivity to shifts in U.S. administrations’ approach to digital assets.

• Process recap: The legislation requires action from both the Senate Banking Committee (which oversees the SEC and securities) and the Senate Agriculture Committee (which oversees the CFTC and commodities). Because of their separate jurisdictions, each committee drafts and marks up its own bill text. Once both are finalized, the texts are merged and the full Senate votes on the combined legislation.

First mover: By publishing its final 278-page text on Tuesday, the Banking Committee moved first. However, the release quickly exposed several unresolved fault lines that had persisted throughout negotiations.

• Core issues: Longstanding disputes resurfaced around tokenized equities and ethics rules for lawmakers and senior officials. In addition, the bill’s DeFi provisions drew criticism from parts of the industry, particularly around data access and user privacy.

A win for the banking lobby? One of the most contentious provisions concerned stablecoin rewards. The draft would prohibit companies from paying yield simply for holding stablecoin balances, while still permitting incentives tied to specific user actions such as transacting, staking, or account activity.

Early optimism: Despite these issues, some industry voices remained supportive of the bill and hoped it could be improved over the course of the legislative process. Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of the nonprofit policy organization Coin Center, wrote:

• “Coin Center’s mission is to protect software developers and non-custodial, decentralized tools. Judged by that standard, we’re optimistic about where the current market structure draft stands.”

Frustration: But for Coinbase, the text still included too many issues, with the company citing “a de facto ban on tokenized equities, DeFi prohibitions that give the government unlimited access to financial records and remove the right to privacy, and amendments that would kill rewards on stablecoins, allowing banks to ban their competition.”

The final blow: As a result, CEO Brian Armstrong announced on Wednesday afternoon that the company was withdrawing its support for the bill.

• Strong signal: As one of the industry’s most influential and well-capitalized voices on Capitol Hill, Coinbase’s move had a major impact and dimmed hopes for a successful markup. Hours later, Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) postponed the vote.

What’s next? While the Agriculture Committee is still expected to hold its own markup in two weeks, it remains unclear whether the Banking Committee’s delay will affect that timeline, particularly given its lead role on several of the bill’s most contested provisions.

Polygon Completes $250 Million in Acquisitions, Accelerates Push Into Stablecoin Payments

M&A: On Tuesday, Polygon Labs, the development company behind the Polygon blockchain, announced the acquisition of two U.S.-based crypto companies, Coinme and Sequence, for a combined $250 million. The transactions are intended to position Polygon Labs as a regulated payments and stablecoin infrastructure provider, spanning wallets, on- and off-ramps, and compliance.

• Why it matters: The acquisitions come amid a sustained increase in stablecoin usage on Polygon. Since early last year, payment volumes from services like Stripe and MoonPay have grown from roughly $40 million to around $240 million on the network. In December, more than 5 million Polygon wallets interacted with stablecoins, making it the third most active network for stablecoin usage behind BNB Chain (12.6 million) and Tron (11.2 million).

• Strategic context: The growth coincides with a key leadership hire. Last September, the company appointed Stripe’s former Head of Crypto as Chief Product Officer, underscoring the strategic repositioning of Polygon as a go-to platform for stablecoin payments.

Open Money Stack: Central to Polygon’s strategy is its Open Money Stack, a bundled set of tools designed to support stablecoin-based products on Polygon. The stack aims to consolidate functions such as wallet creation, cross-chain transfers, payments, and fiat on- and off-ramps into a single API, reducing integration complexity for businesses and developers.

• “If you think about how you do that today, you need to choose a chain, take these different components, figure out who you’re going to work with, figure out pricing, and stitch them together,” said Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs. “It’s actually really complicated.”

Key additions: With the Coinme and Sequence acquisitions, Polygon is aiming to strengthen the stack, adding major new building blocks to the offering.

• What Coinme brings: Coinme adds regulated payments and wallet infrastructure, including money-transmitter licenses across 48 U.S. states. It also runs a 50,000+ retail network where users can convert cash into crypto via partners like Walmart and Coinstar, alongside an enterprise API for trading, custody, and fiat on- and off-ramps.

• What Sequence brings: Sequence primarily expands Polygon’s wallet toolkit. The acquisition includes embedded wallets with enterprise-grade security, as well as a one-click cross-chain orchestration and intents engine that hides bridging, swaps, and gas from users and is already used across ecosystems like Arbitrum and Monad.

Use cases: In the near term, Polygon Labs expects the Open Money Stack to be adopted primarily by traditional businesses and fintechs for use cases such as cross-border payments, remittances, and stablecoin-based treasury and cash management.

What’s the news?

• On Wednesday, French RWA startup Spiko announced it had secured a MiFID investment firm license, enabling it to passport its services across the European Economic Area (EEA).

• Specializing in cash management solutions for corporates, Spiko runs the largest euro-denominated tokenized money market fund (EUTBL), with more than €500 million in TVL, alongside sterling- and US dollar-denominated funds.

Behind-the-scenes: We spoke with CEO and co-founder Paul-Adrien Hyppolite about the concrete unlock the license provides and what it means for the startup’s product roadmap.

New report: We spoke with 25 leading founders, investors, and executives on their predictions across tokenization, stablecoins, regulation, markets, and infrastructure for 2026.

You can access their views here for free.