It’s official now. Yesterday, Stripe finally announced their own layer-1 blockchain Tempo.

Naturally, it comes with the technical polish you’d expect: high throughput, low fees, opt-in privacy, and EVM compatibility. But there are also some surprises. Tempo will be stablecoin-neutral, letting anyone issue their own stablecoin and use it for gas. And while it launches as permissioned, validator access will gradually open up.

Also interesting: Stripe is building Tempo with a dozen high-profile “design partners”, including Deutsche Bank, Visa, Shopify, OpenAI, and DoorDash.

If that lineup gives you Libra flashbacks, you’re not alone. The difference? This time, regulators are hosting stablecoin conferences.

Today, we’ll talk about:

• Treasury: A new bitcoin treasury company enters Europe

• Ondo launches Global Markets for tokenized stocks

• Galaxy tokenizes its public stock via Superstate on Solana

Winkelvoss Twins, Nakamoto Inc. Back European Bitcoin Treasury Company in €126 Million Deal

Another one: On Wednesday, the team behind Treasury announced plans to launch a euro-denominated Bitcoin treasury company, with the goal of listing on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam and ultimately becoming Europe’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury vehicle.

• High-profile backers: To support this vision, the company raised €126 million ($147 million) from players the Winklevoss twins and Nakamoto Holdings Inc., a U.S.-based Bitcoin treasury company led by Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey.

• First moves: The funds have already been used to acquire more than 1,000 BTC, making Treasury the 47th-largest Bitcoin treasury company globally and the 4th-largest in Europe.

Why it matters: Since Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy started accumulating BTC in 2020, the Bitcoin treasury playbook has spread across the globe. Today, 315 entities hold a combined 3.7 million BTC — roughly 17% of Bitcoin’s total supply. Most of these companies are based in the U.S., followed by Canada, the U.K., and Asia.

• “This made me think,” told us Tycho Onnasch, newly appointed Head of Bitcoin Strategy at Treasury. “What about Europe? While Europe is the second-richest continent in the world, most of its wealth is parked in insurers and pension funds. These funds are typically weighted toward fixed-income (debt) assets and, in many cases, are mandated to invest primarily in European instruments.”

The opportunity: In theory, these conditions make European institutional investors well-suited for Bitcoin treasury vehicles, as their model relies on issuing corporate debt — primarily convertible bonds — to finance BTC purchases and increase BTC holdings per share.

• A growing landscape: And Treasury isn't the first company to bet big on this opportunity. Since July of this year, the French semiconductor company Sequans Communications has acquired roughly 3,200 BTC, making it the largest Bitcoin treasury vehicle in Europe and the 24th-largest globally.

Chasing volatility: But according to Onnasch, it’s not just Bitcoin exposure driving investor interest: “For convertible arbitrage desks, Bitcoin-linked bonds are attractive primarily because of their volatility. Meaning, they don't necessarily want to make a directional bet on Bitcoin itself; rather, it's Bitcoin's volatility that makes these structures particularly compelling to them.”

• Existing demand: One data point demonstrating investors’ interest comes from the European insurer Allianz, which took 24% of Strategy’s $600 million convertible bond offering in March 2024.

Market size: The potential investor base, however, extends beyond a single insurer, with Onnasch noting that the pool of potential investors in Bitcoin-linked debt instruments may be even larger in Europe than in the U.S.: “European convertible bond funds hold a massive €35 billion in AUM, compared to less than $25 billion for their U.S. counterparts.”

Next steps: Treasury plans a reverse takeover of Dutch-listed company MKB Nedsense N.V. (MKBN). Following the deal, it will begin issuing its first instruments and executing its capital markets strategy to acquire additional BTC and grow BTC holdings per share.

Ondo Launches “Global Markets,” Brings U.S. Securities Onchain

Long time in the making: Initially announced back in February 2024, tokenization platform Ondo officially launched its Global Markets (GM) platform on Wednesday. The product gives non-U.S. investors 24/7 onchain access to selected tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs directly on Ethereum.

• Why it matters: Ondo is already a major player in the tokenization space, managing $1.4 billion in AUM across its flagship U.S. Treasury products OUSG and USDY, making it the second-largest issuer of tokenized Treasuries. With Ondo GM, the company is expanding into tokenized equities, joining other early movers like Kraken and Robinhood, both of which launched similar products earlier this year.

How it works: When users purchase tokenized equities on Ondo GM, the platform sources the underlying shares through a U.S.-registered broker-dealer, and these shares are then held with a regulated custodian. The tokens issued to users function as so-called “total return trackers,” mirroring the full price performance of the underlying stocks, including dividends and other corporate actions.

• Structural limitations: But as with most other existing offerings, these tokens do not grant voting rights or direct ownership of the underlying shares.

Improving liquidity: Still, while Ondo GM shares the shortcomings of other tokenized equity offerings, the team has focused on solving one of the biggest challenges in the space today: liquidity. As Ondo founder and CEO Nathan Allman explains, most platforms rely on a handful of prefunded market makers — a model that doesn’t scale and frequently leads to thin liquidity, high slippage, and persistent price dislocations between token prices and the underlying share prices.

Ondo’s solution: Ondo GM tackles this by introducing instant minting and burning of tokenized equities in exchange for stablecoins. This design not only allows arbitrageurs to continuously align token prices with traditional market prices but also enables the separation of trading and settlement, as is typically done in TradFi. As a result, GM effectively “inherits” the liquidity of the underlying assets, minimizing slippage and keeping secondary prices tightly in line with spot markets.

• To illustrate the difference, Allman cites a concrete example: Today, purchasing $200k worth of tokenized S&P 500 through xStocks’ most liquid venue would result in a 200 bps price impact, effectively erasing about 2.5 months of returns. On Ondo GM, the same trade can be executed with just 1-3 bps of price impact, depending on market conditions.

Gradual rollout: To ensure smooth operations, Ondo GM is being rolled out gradually. Trading is currently limited to selected users, with a waitlist available. Trade sizes are capped at $200k per transaction during market hours and $100k for off-market trades.

Next steps: By year-end, the team plans to scale the offering to over 100 tokenized stocks and integrate them into the DeFi ecosystem. For example, users should soon be able to use them as collateral for loans on platforms like Morpho, or stake them to secure Ondo Chain, the company’s upcoming layer-1, and earn staking rewards.

A conversation with Thomas Cowan, Head of Tokenization at Galaxy. This week, Galaxy became one of the first public companies to put its own equity onchain. In partnership with Superstate, shareholders can now tokenize and hold Galaxy’s Class A stock on Solana.