EP. 101 | We Crushed Consensus. Also We're Expanding to London
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Member Spotlight
This week we want to celebrate a VIP member who truly embodies what Introduction.com is all about.
Meet Michael Lau 👋
Chairman of Consensus
Head of Business Development at Bullish
Helping lead one of the most important conferences in crypto from the front lines
And honestly… what a run last week in Miami.
→ Hosting CZ on stage
→ Moderating Eric Trump and Asher Genoot from American Bitcoin
→ Bringing together leaders across crypto, finance, AI, infrastructure, and policy under one roof
Without Michael, none of the incredible curated experiences, high level connections, and unforgettable moments surrounding Consensus Miami would have been possible.
This is what our network is all about.
Access is earned.
Keep building.
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🎉Consensus: We Crush 🎉
That’s a wrap! 🌴
Consensus Miami was a week of relentless noise. For the masses, it was panels and badge-scanning. For Introduction.com, it was a surgical execution across three nights that redefined what it means to be "in the room."
We anchored the week with a triple-residency of the most guarded tables in the city. While the numbers speak for themselves—3,000+ registrations for fewer than 150 total seats—the real story was the gravity of the dialogue.
From the tables at Cipriani to the private terraces of The Betsy and a waterfront estate on Venetian Island, we sat at the intersection of trillions in market cap and the frontier of digital culture.
These evenings saw the architects of American Bitcoin, Pi Network, XDC, Hedera, and Diamante sharing unfiltered perspectives with the leadership of Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple.
The dialogue bridged the gap between legacy institutional power and the frontier, bringing together decision-makers from Visa, Bank of America, and the UK Parliament with the visionaries at a16z, Coinbase, and Robinhood.
As always, we operated under Chatham House Rule. The identities remain behind closed doors; the ammunition gathered at these tables is now being deployed across the industry.
But these rooms are reserved for the few. We bridge the gap between the world's most guarded boardrooms and the individuals pushing the frontier of technology.
Whether you are seeking a seat at the table or looking to engineer an environment of this caliber for your own ecosystem, the standard remains absolute. This is where legacy power and new-world leverage finally align.
You might have missed Miami. Don’t miss what’s next.
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Events
London, the wait is over 🇬🇧 Introduction.com has officially landed.
Assets & Access London is live. Open to the public for now. VIP experiences loading.
This is only the beginning 👀
Builders Welcome.
Assets & Access Tampa @ The Copper Shaker
Thursday, May 14
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
The Copper Shaker Ybor
Tampa, Florida
SVB Private Penthouse Dinner: An Introduction.com Exclusive
Tuesday, May 19
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM PDT
San Francisco, CA
Assets & Access London with Flight3
Thursday, May 28
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM GMT+1
George
London, United Kingdom
Top Raises
Member Activity
Acquisition
Reap is being acquired by Payward (Kraken's parent) in a $600M cash-and-stock deal that values Payward at $20B and marks Kraken's first infrastructure acquisition in Asia.
The Hong Kong-based payments firm operates cross-border and B2B settlement infrastructure that bridges traditional finance and digital assets, with the deal letting Kraken embed card issuance, cross-border payments, and stablecoin treasury services into its B2B stack without piecing together multiple vendors.
Big win for Daniel Berman and the Kraken team! Keep the wins coming!
DFlow was acquired by MoonPay in an all-stock deal worth approximately $100M, expanding MoonPay's Solana trading footprint.
The DEX aggregator handled more than $12B in volume in Q1 2026 across 1M+ active traders and 500+ Solana applications, and its routing infrastructure will plug into MoonPay's four-pillar build-out spanning fund, tokenize, trade, and spend, marking MoonPay's sixth acquisition in 18 months.
Love this for Halsey Huth and the MoonPay team!
Token Sale
Circle raised $222M for Arc, the native token of its new institutional blockchain, in a presale led by a16z crypto with a $75M commitment, alongside backing from BlackRock and Apollo Funds.
Arc is a stablecoin-native Layer 1 that uses USDC as its gas token and has drawn more than 100 institutions including Visa and HSBC into its public testnet since October, with proceeds supporting the push toward a mainnet beta later this year at a $3B fully diluted valuation.
LFG Circle! Proud to be part of the Circle Alliance!
Strategic
OpenTrade closed $17M in strategic funding led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global.
The London-based platform connects fintechs to stablecoin yield products backed by real-world assets, with the round set to scale both its permissioned and permissionless infrastructure as the team builds on $200M in TVL and targets $1B+ in transaction volume by year-end.
Way to go Pyrs Carvolth and the a16z team! Thanks for the inside scoop on this one.
ArcNova landed $15M in strategic funding from a roster of backers including Animoca Brands, Adaverse, and Liquid Capital, with Redline Labs and Waterdrip Capital also participating.
The Web3 entertainment platform fuses blockchain infrastructure with AI tooling to power interactive storytelling, gaming, and creator-driven digital experiences, with proceeds backing the build-out of mini-apps, social engagement layers, and tokenized entertainment economies as ArcNova positions itself as AI-native entertainment infrastructure.
Luca Ioannis and the Animoca team has been popping off recently! Keep it up!
GSR secured its first external strategic investment in over a decade, with Standard Chartered's SC Ventures taking a stake at a valuation north of $1B.
The crypto market maker will use the partnership to expand a capital-markets services model spanning token design, pre-issuance strategy, listing support, and post-listing market making, building an institutional-grade tokenization stack alongside Standard Chartered as it reportedly explores up to $150M of additional strategic capital.
Proud to be aligned with the GSR team!
Non-Member Activity
Strategic
Augustus (formerly Ivy) raised $40M from Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures and Creandum, alongside the founders of Ramp, Deel, and Circle, in tandem with winning rare conditional OCC approval to operate as a U.S. national bank.
The Berlin-rooted firm is targeting the first "AI-era clearing bank" built on a stablecoin and AI-native core, already processing billions of euros for institutional clients including Kraken while growing 10x year over year as it pursues only the eighth national bank charter the OCC has greenlit since 2010.
Capital B raised €15.2M (approximately $17.8M) through a private placement subscribed by global institutional investors, including Blockstream co-founder Adam Back and French asset manager TOBAM.
The Euronext Growth Paris-listed firm, billed as Europe's first Bitcoin Treasury Company, will put €14.4M in net proceeds toward acquiring 182 additional BTC (bringing potential holdings to 3,125 BTC), with up to another €99.1M in capital potentially unlocked if attached warrants are fully exercised.
Eggs are outperforming my portfolio 🍳 📈
The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the cost of living for the average American consumer. While general cumulative inflation since 2016 reached roughly 35 percent, everyday essentials like housing and groceries experienced much steeper price hikes.
The transition from historically low interest rates in 2016 to the unprecedented global monetary stimulus of 2020 triggered a massive surge in asset values that carried into 2024. Moving into 2026, energy inflation drove a 3.8 percent surge in consumer prices this April and ignited severe localized inflation in essential categories like fuel and food.
This persistently hot economic data has put the Federal Reserve on guard for longer lasting inflation and is increasing the odds of future interest rate hikes.
AWS Taps Coinbase and Stripe for AI Agent USDC Payments
Amazon Web Services has partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to launch Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments. This system enables AI agents to autonomously execute microtransactions using the x402 protocol.
The x402 protocol was co-created by our very own Introduction.com member, Kevin Leffew!!
By integrating this open payment protocol directly within AWS infrastructure, developers can now fund wallets to process machine-to-machine payments in roughly 200 milliseconds using USDC on Base and Solana.
Show Kevin some love and check out his full launch announcement on LinkedIn.
The Debasement Trade Rotates Toward Digital Assets
The debasement trade is shifting rapidly as investors aggressively move capital into Bitcoin to hedge against fiat currency weakness and ongoing geopolitical instability following the Iran war shock.
This rotation is corroborated by JPMorgan analysts who noted that Bitcoin has gained roughly 19% while gold has declined about 5%, with spot Bitcoin ETFs pulling steady inflows as gold ETFs simultaneously bleed capital.
With CME futures positioning climbing to new highs and corporate treasuries like Strategy projected to absorb another $30 billion in Bitcoin through 2026, digital assets are cementing their status over gold as the preferred safe haven during global macro uncertainty.
Japan and US Reaffirm Close Cooperation on Currency Moves
Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have formally reaffirmed their tight coordination regarding foreign exchange interventions to combat extreme market volatility.
This bilateral endorsement provides crucial diplomatic cover following an estimated 10 trillion yen ($63.5 billion) in recent yen buying operations by Tokyo aimed at propping up its sagging currency and curbing domestic import costs.
With global markets closely monitoring sovereign risk and the yen carry trade, establishing a united front against unchecked currency depreciation serves as a critical backstop to stabilize exchange rates and protect broader asset liquidity.
Regulation Roundup
United States 🇺🇸
Treasury Orders Binance to Honor 2023 Monitorship After $1B in Crypto Reportedly Reached Iran
The U.S. Treasury Department has issued Binance a private letter ordering the exchange to comply with the independent compliance monitorship it accepted under its November 2023 guilty plea, following reports that more than $1 billion in crypto routed through the platform to entities linked to Iran across 2024 and 2025.
The action accuses Binance of falling short on the three-year oversight commitment that accompanied its $4.3 billion sanctions and anti-money-laundering settlement, with prior reporting identifying over 1,500 accounts accessed from Iran and roughly $1.7 billion routed to wallets connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
With Operation Economic Fury already sanctioning Iranian wallets and pressuring Tether to freeze $344 million in USDT this spring, the move signals that Treasury now views major centralized exchanges as primary chokepoints for sanctions enforcement rather than passive intermediaries.
Senate Banking Committee Set to Mark Up the CLARITY Act on May 14
The Senate Banking Committee is set to hold the first executive session vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act this Thursday, May 14 at 10:30 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, finally moving U.S. crypto market structure legislation off the subcommittee bench and into a committee level decision.
A successful markup would send the bill to the full Senate floor under a White House timeline targeting a July 4 signature ceremony, while a stall before the Memorial Day recess would push the next viable window for market structure legislation out to 2030 according to bill sponsors Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno.
The outcome will determine whether the United States gets its first statutory framework dividing digital asset oversight between the SEC and CFTC, with downstream implications for stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and the broader institutional adoption thesis that has powered this year's ETF flow story.
Federal Funds Rate Looks Pinned at 3.75% Until 2027 as Inflation Refuses to Cool
The federal funds rate has been parked at 3.5% to 3.75% since the FOMC's last quarter-point cut in December 2025, with every subsequent meeting ending in a hold as core inflation reaccelerated to 3.3% well above the 2% target.
Market pricing on CME FedWatch now places the odds of any cut before the second half of 2027 below 50%, a path Bank of America formally endorsed last Friday by abandoning its prior September and October 2026 cut forecasts.
Hawkish regional Fed presidents Austan Goolsbee and Alberto Musalem have publicly anchored the case for holding by citing AI driven productivity gains, Iran war energy costs, and tariff pass-through pressure, leaving Trump nominee Kevin Warsh's expected easing instincts colliding with a committee that increasingly does not view cuts as warranted.
International 🌏
Bank of England Governor Warns of Coming Stablecoin Standards Clash with US
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, who also chairs the Financial Stability Board, has warned of a "coming wrestle" with the United States over global stablecoin rules, telling a Friday conference that dollar tokens lacking direct redemption to fiat could destabilize the United Kingdom in a crisis.
The concern centers on U.S. stablecoins that cannot be converted into dollars without routing through a crypto exchange, a structural fragility Bailey believes would funnel run risk into jurisdictions with stricter convertibility standards like the UK during a market panic.
The remarks mark the most direct G7 central banker pushback yet against the Trump administration's GENIUS Act framework, setting up a multilateral fight over whether stablecoin oversight will be shaped on U.S. terms or under binding FSB international standards.
South Korea Forces Cross Border Crypto Firms to Register with Finance Ministry
South Korea's National Assembly has passed an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act creating a new legal category called "virtual asset transfer business," requiring any firm that moves crypto between Korea and abroad through sale, purchase, or exchange to register with the Minister of Economy and Finance before doing so.
Penalties for illegal foreign exchange activity involving digital assets now reach one year in prison or fines of up to 100 million won (roughly $72,500), while the Financial Services Commission is separately moving to extend the Travel Rule to every crypto transaction by scrapping the existing 1 million won threshold for collecting sender and recipient data.
The amendment closes what regulators have long considered a stablecoin shaped loophole in capital controls, positioning Seoul alongside Brazil and the eurozone in actively policing the cross-border payment rails crypto firms have built around traditional FX channels.
Crypto.com Becomes First Firm Licensed by UAE Central Bank to Process Government Payments
The Central Bank of the UAE has granted Crypto.com's local entity, Foris DAX Middle East FZE, a Stored Value Facilities license, making the exchange the first virtual asset service provider authorized to process crypto payments for Dubai government fees under the emirate's Cashless Strategy.
All settlements must clear in UAE dirhams or central bank approved dirham backed stablecoins, insulating state finances from crypto volatility while operationalizing the May 2025 framework agreement between Crypto.com and Dubai Finance.
The license slots Crypto.com into the rails of a Dubai cashless agenda projected to add roughly $2.1 billion annually to the emirate's economy, while granting the firm exclusive access to integrations now in the queue with Emirates Airlines and Dubai Duty Free.
