Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin Bet Pays Off, Robinhood's Trump Boost & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

• Personal Finance: OpenAI acquihires team behind Hiro. 

• Trump Accounts: Robinhood named brokerage and initial trustee.

• Revenue Windfall: BofA estimates $1tn in volume p.a. for sport predictions.

Say what you want about Wall Street's late arrival to crypto, but Morgan Stanley just turned its spot BTC ETF into a revenue gusher.

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Crib Capital

Last week, the United States Treasury took a quiet but consequential step: it appointed Bank of New York Mellon, founded in 1784, as financial agent for the Trump Accounts programme, and named Robinhood, founded in 2013, as brokerage and initial trustee. The pairing is unusual; but it's also inspired.

The Trump Accounts programme itself is straightforward. Every American child born between 2025 and 2028 will receive a $1,000 federal contribution into a government-backed investment account at birth. No means test. No parental income threshold. A capital stake, granted as a matter of civic birthright.

The programme currently restricts holdings to index funds. This is a sensible starting point. Index investing remains one of the most robust wealth-building instruments available to retail participants. Yet, Trump Accounts arrive at a moment when the investable universe has expanded considerably beyond public equities. Private markets, Bitcoin, stablecoin yield, perpetual futures, and prediction market bonds now sit within reach of ordinary investors—asset classes that carry more volatility, yes, but also the kind of upside that doesn't politely cap itself at single digits annually.

This is precisely why the Robinhood appointment carries significance well beyond the administrative. Its selection as trustee creates meaningful optionality: the platform's real edge is its exposure to high-risk, high-reward assets. Should political conditions allow for a broadening of eligible asset classes within Trump Accounts, the technical capacity to do so already exists.

Trump Accounts in their current form are a first chapter, not a final answer. The expectation, and it is a reasonable one, is that trustees will eventually gain flexibility to broaden the asset menu, adjusting risk and compounding ambition according to the child's circumstances and the parents' convictions. 

The plumbing is installed, the appetite is growing—someone just needs to turn on the tap.

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Personal Finance: OpenAI has acquihired the team behind Hiro, an AI-powered personal finance application, following its earlier acquihire of Roi. Roi aggregates a user's financial data across equities, real estate, and crypto, offering insights and trading recommendations. Hiro operates in a similar space, positioning itself as an AI personal CFO.

Solana Parlays: A new prediction markets platform just launched on Solana: Totalis. The venue enables users to build parlays across multiple categories, markets, and venues, combining geopolitics, crypto, and sports into a single trade. 

Revenue Windfall: Bank of America has estimated the potential market for US sports-related event contracts at approximately $1.1tn in annual volume. The bank projects that such activity could generate $10bn in annualised revenue for prediction market platforms. 

Stablecoin Economy: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has approved a proposal to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act. The guidelines set out requirements for US banks and their subsidiaries covering reserve assets, redemption mechanisms, and risk management standards. The rules also clarify the regulatory treatment of tokenised deposits as the agency moves to formally integrate stablecoins into the supervised banking sector.

Swiss Stablecoin: UBS and a consortium including PostFinance, Sygnum, Raiffeisen, Zürcher Kantonalbank, and Banque Cantonale Vaudoise have launched a sandbox initiative to test a Swiss franc-denominated stablecoin. The group is partnering with Swiss Stablecoin AG to simulate real-world payment flows and blockchain-based transactions.

German Stake: Deutsche Börse has agreed to invest $200 million in Payward Inc., the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, acquiring a 1.5% fully diluted stake in the business. The Frankfurt-based exchange operator said the investment supports its ambition to offer a broader range of securities settled over blockchain infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, pending regulatory approval.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line. 

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}