Crypto is Macro Now

WEEKLY - meme coins + new banking

Noelle Acheson — Sat, 02 May 2026 12:02:34 GMT

Hello everyone, and welcome to May!

You’re reading the free weekly Crypto is Macro Now, where I re-share a couple of posts from the week and add some assorted links.

On Monday, I was a guest on Scott Melker’s Macro Monday show, where I joined Mike McGlone and Peter Tchir in a characteristically spicy debate about macro and crypto, you can see the replay here.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

In this newsletter:

Meme coins and the crypto blues
Western Union and modern banking
Assorted links: American songwriters, infinity, saving humanity, listening vs deskwork, cooking for one.
Weekend: a global take on an iconic song

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

✨Press Publish with John ‘Alyosha’ Johnston✨

Next Friday, May 8th, come join me in a conversation with John ‘Alyosha’ Johnston, author of the Market Vibes newsletter on Substack.

If you don’t already know JJ’s work, it’s an essential read for anyone interested in markets and/or commodities, written by someone who brings decades of trading experience to your inbox and yet still treats each day as an adventure in learning and sharing. We’re not going to chat about price uncertainty or macro, we’re going to discuss newslettering – why he does what he does, how he gets so much done, what’s worked for him on Substack and what hasn’t, what advice he’d give others starting out, and more.

Join us next Friday, May 8th, at 11am EST/5pm CEST.

Some of the topics discussed in this week’s premium dailies:

Monday, April 27

Coming up this week: central banks!
Monday mood: Meme coins and the crypto blues
Term of the day: meme coin

Tuesday, April 28

Western Union and modern banking
Term of the day: Kharg Island
Markets: disbelief

Wednesday, April 29

When cracks become fractures
Term of the day: Exchange Stabilization Fund
Markets: pull the other one

Thursday, April 30

he Fed surprises
Macro: US and Eurozone data
Term of the day: Eurozone
Bitcoin benefits from AI wealth

Meme coins and the crypto blues

A high-profile event last weekend inadvertently highlighted what I think is an overlooked explanation for the “crypto blues”, that jaded feeling of ennui that many long-time advocates have been struggling to put a finger on.

I’m not talking about the drama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Rather, I want to focus on Trump’s meme coin lunch held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

If that statement triggered an instinctive recoil, that’s part of the issue. Our distaste for meme coins is worth unpacking as it’s not just about speculative tokens, nor is it just about blatant grift or influence abuse. There’s something else going on here.

First, let’s establish what we mean by “meme coin”: a blockchain-based token inspired by a cultural trend or personality. Generally, they have no clear utility other than simply “being”. BTC, for example, acts as a hard-cap store of value as well as a representative token for a decentralized database. ETH powers a global decentralized computing platform. AAVE confers voting rights and can serve as collateral. Meme coins DOGE, PEPE and BONK, on the other hand, don’t have any clear function.

Is that true, though? Arguably, their function is signalling. If you hold dogwifhat (WIF), you are signalling that you identify with that community, that particular meme.

Some no doubt pile into a meme token to bet on a popularity surge pushing up the price to lock in a good profit. But for many, expressing oneself via token purchases, well, it feels good.

So, arguably meme coins have an emotional utility, much like baseball cards or Labubus. Anyone looking down their noses at meme coins should also be looking down their noses at other forms of community signalling or momentum speculation. And yet neither piling into unprofitable penny stocks because of a reddit post nor wearing a t-shirt of your favourite band trigger the same recoil instinct.

And we have to acknowledge that the $TRUMP meme coin does have a “practical” utility: it grants access to events. It’s not a leap to imagine holders of a movie-inspired meme coin earning tickets to the premiere, or those that hold a hippo-inspired token getting discounts on related merchandise. Meme coin “utility” could become a more widespread concept.

Perhaps the instinctive recoil isn’t because of meme coins as much as it is about this particular one. Fair enough. For many of us, it instinctively feels wrong that the President of the United States or members of his family should personally profit from selling access via meme coin acquisition. I’m in that camp so I’m not trying to justify anything here – but are we really going to kid ourselves that selling access hasn’t been a feature of US politics for a very long time?

Maybe our distaste stems from just how blatant this is – we’d feel better about grift and profiteering if it wasn’t so obvious. But isn’t it healthier to have it out in the open, so we can hopefully, finally, pressure politicians to do something about it?

Perhaps the instinctive recoil is intensified by the juxtaposition of grift and crypto.

Those who hate crypto will see the $TRUMP meme coin as representing everything that is bad about the space: “of course it’s only good for grift”. This is confirmation bias writ large, in which an obvious example makes all the exceptions invisible or irrelevant.

Meanwhile, those of us that believe in crypto’s levelling and uplifting potential are disappointed that its highest-ranking proponent brandishes a meme coin as an example to uphold. Then again, that breadth of choice is embedded in the crypto market – its flexibility and open access is the point. We can judge, but as long as what people do with the technology is legal, that’s all we can do.

We can find the choices made by President Trump and his family cringe and embarrassing, but we can’t really be surprised. Nor can we, with integrity, advocate for only “some” legal crypto uses being acceptable. Again, whether a high-ranking official should be able to push a meme coin so publicly is not a crypto issue, it’s to do with the current political system.

The unease stems from more than disappointment, though, it goes deeper than disapproval. It’s about the sinking realization that we’ve been played.

Trump’s full-throated embrace of meme coins represents where he sees individual opportunity in crypto markets. His earlier praise of Bitcoin now looks like a tactic to get crypto donor funds, and there were plenty for the taking. His insistence that the US has to accelerate crypto approvals in order to compete with China never made sense to anyone watching the Chinese crypto market. And last weekend he was flying the “America Is Great” flag in saying:

“The crypto industry was created in America. Its growth has been led by America, and its future will be made in America and other countries.”

If he understood crypto at all, he’d know this was not true – the crypto industry was not created in America, nor was its early growth based there.

And this at an event billed as the “most exclusive crypto and business conference in the world” – for holders of a certain meme coin.

We have to appreciate that, under the current Administration, the crypto industry has as a whole gained a lot. Thanks to President Trump, we are net ahead in terms of regulatory acceptance and institutional support. We may not like everything he does, but he promised crypto progress and he largely delivered.

But the feeling of being used is never a good one. This, I think, goes some way towards explaining why, when things are going well for the crypto industry overall, so many of us have been feeling a notable lack of excitement. It’s not the uninteresting price movement – we’ve been through this before. Nor is it the attention pivot of venture capital over to the AI space – funding has dropped, but that’s arguably healthier than the easy-money era which did not do much for crypto’s reputation. And investment in crypto projects from traditional finance firms is high.

There’s some satisfying vindication in seeing the price of $TRUMP drop 14% on the day of its big event – at least until we realize that it would be because some of those who bought in order to get an invite sold once they got the introductions they needed. And according to reports, the President didn’t mention is meme coin once, which suggests he’s not that interested – that may feel like a relief until we start asking who is trying to pump up its value.

In sum, the recoil many of us feel when we hear about “meme coin galas” isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about meme coins at all. We don’t have to want to invest in them to recognize their right to exist.

Rather, it’s a bitter soup of frustration and disappointment that dilutes the substance of gained ground. Put differently, we’ve come a long way – but we’re not loving the aftertaste of how we got here.

✨ If you find this newsletter useful and want to support my work, would you mind sharing it with your friends and colleagues and nudging them to subscribe? I’d appreciate it! ✨

Western Union and modern banking

In last week’s quarterly earnings call, Western Union President and CEO Devin McGranahan confirmed that the company’s previously announced stablecoin USDPT will launch on Solana next month. This was expected, and I’ve written about Western Union’s stablecoin plans before – but McGranahan threw in a couple of surprises which sketch out an assault on what is understood by “banking”.

First, some details:

The first phase of the rollout, expected next month, will be the minting and distribution of the stablecoin for internal use as a 24/7 settlement token between Western Union outlets. This is likely to have a significant impact on margins as many are in countries with expensive correspondent banking, although it’s not yet clear what corridors this substitution will be available in (initial launch will be in a “couple of countries”). The aim here is to totally bypass the SWIFT network, effectively setting up an alternative non-bank transfer route – of course, banks will be a key part of the final settlement, but the intermediate (and profitable, for the banks) step will be disintermediated.

At the same time, Western Union is rolling out the Digital Asset Network (DAN) which will enable customers to on- and off-ramp via Western Union’s digital wallet. The first partner on the network will be announced possibly as soon as next week – this could be a wallet provider (Crossmint confirmed collaboration last month) or perhaps an exchange for fiat conversion. It’s not clear what jurisdictions DAN will be available in, but McGranahan specified “millions of wallet users” moving from digital assets into fiat currency, and that the partner pipeline “represents tens of millions of crypto wallets globally”.

This launch will have a broader reach and will be more complex as it seeps out of the Western Union nucleus into third party wallet providers and crypto exchanges, all of whom will need to agree to handle and make markets in USDPT.

Finally, later this year, Western Union will launch the Stable Card, a type of account linked to a Visa-enabled card that can receive USDPT and spend it at participating merchants without going through payout to account or cash. Again, it’s not clear in how many markets Stable Card will operate, but McGranahan said it would be “dozens”.

As far as I know, this was not mentioned in previous Western Union announcements.

It’s also, out of all the firm’s digital asset moves, the most disruptive for banking.

Not only does it offer users around the world (eventually, perhaps) a convenient way to hold and use dollars. It does so without them needing to touch banks. True, they will be without banking protections – but in many emerging countries, trust in Western Union is higher than trust in financial institutions. And many Western Union customers can’t afford bank accounts.

As I’ve said before, this is a smart strategy that can go some way towards fending off the multiple startups coming for the stablecoin remittance space – Western Union’s brand recognition and network reach catapults them into a strong competitive position. Adding transactional accounts makes the strategy even smarter.

Of course, there’s likely to be some regulatory bumps along the way. Local monetary authorities are not going to like the idea of their citizens holding and using dollars. Banks will object to being cut out of the profitable equation. But the strategic utility of Western Union as a conduit for economic inflows will hopefully give them some negotiating clout, more than a startup would have.

And stepping back, this is just one more example of the inevitable clash between traditional regulation-protected banking and the popular efficiency of new technologies.

Meanwhile, regulators will continue to struggle with the political imperative to keep the existing financial system happy and safe, and the economic incentive to modernize financial access.

See also:

Western Union’s stablecoin: scalability wins (Oct 2025)

ASSORTED LINKS

(A selection of reads I came across this week that I think are worth sharing, not always about crypto or macro. I try to choose links without a paywall, but when I feel it’s worth making an exception, I specify.)

Ted Gioia made a list of his top 15 American songwriters still alive today. There will be names on here you’ll wonder why you haven’t thought of in a while. Who would be on your list? (The NY Times Asked Me to Pick the Greatest Living American Songwriters, The Honest Broker)
Evan Milenko lays out the painful reasoning behind the poll going around the internet on whether you would press the blue button to save humanity, or the red button to save yourself. He also shares the encouraging results. A fascinating thought experiment. (Which Button Would You Press?, Pirate Wires)
By profiling mathematician Doron Zeilberger, Gregory Barber offers us a reminder that it’s important and yet also uncomfortable to question things we take for granted – such as the notion of infinity. (What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?, Quanta)
A beautifully written ode to the importance of movement, the convenience of texts read out loud, and what music has to do with learning – and how we can get more done by not spending so much time at our desks. (The Flow Rig: How I Stopped Sitting at My Desk and Started Listening to Everything, Turquoise Sound)
Nigella Lawson puts into words what I have long been trying to explain to friends and family: cooking for oneself is an overlooked delight, a low-pressure way to learn to enjoy the process, as well as a satisfying act of selfish creation that boosts moods and reminds us that life can be both simple and exciting at the same time. (Can’t cook, won’t cook? Start by feeding yourself, Financial Times – paywall)

If you find Crypto is Macro Now useful, would you mind hitting the like button? ❤ I’m told it feeds the almighty algorithm.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

(in this section, I share stuff that has NOTHING to do with macro or crypto, ‘cos it’s the weekend and life is interesting)

A montage of musicians from around the world performing and accompanying Riders on the Storm - including some of the original Doors members with patched-in vocals and instrumentals from those no longer with us!! Just breathtaking.

DISCLAIMER: I never give trading ideas, and NOTHING I say is investment advice! I hold some BTC, ETH and a tiny amount of some smaller tokens, but they’re all long-term holdings – I don’t trade. Also, I often use AI for research instead of Google, but never for writing.

The Fed surprises + oil drama

Noelle Acheson — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:16:27 GMT

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.” – Seneca ||

Hi everyone! How, seriously, can it be the end of April already…

Production note: it’s a public holiday in much of Europe tomorrow, so this newsletter will be skipping publication – back on Saturday with the free weekly.

Because of the holiday, no “Press Publish” this week, but back next Friday! Meanwhile, check out my conversations with Irina Slav, Brady Dale and Christine Kim here.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

The Fed surprises
Macro: US and Eurozone data
Term of the day: Eurozone
Bitcoin benefits from AI wealth

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

The Fed surprises

Many of us had expected a poignant yet uneventful FOMC press conference yesterday, with Chair Jerome Powell gracefully avoiding saying anything of substance before exiting stage left.

We didn’t get that.

When cracks become fractures

Noelle Acheson — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:19:21 GMT

“How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.” – R. Buckminster Fuller ||

Hello, everyone, and happy Fed Day! Jerome Powell’s last press conference as Fed Chair… end of an era.

Apologies for the late send today, SO much NEWS to get through this morning…

Production note: it’s a public holiday in much of Europe on Friday, so this newsletter will be skipping publication.

Because of the holiday, no “Press Publish” this week, but back next Friday! Meanwhile, check out my conversations with Irina Slav, Brady Dale and Christine Kim here.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

When cracks become fractures
Term of the day: Exchange Stabilization Fund
Markets: pull the other one

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

When cracks become fractures

After four months of some of the most head-spinning geopolitical body blows in recent memory – the incursion into a foreign country’s territory to capture their leader, threats to invade a NATO ally to take one of their islands, an attack along with Israel of a Middle East oil producer and a blockade in international waters – we now have confirmation that the cracks are spreading.

Yesterday, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that on May 1 it is leaving the oil cartel OPEC+ after almost 60 years of membership.

Last month, it demanded immediate repayment of a $3.5 billion loan to Pakistan.

And just over a week ago, reports emerged that the UAE approached the US about a dollar swap line.

These shifts are all related, and together they paint a confusing picture. This is appropriate given the current global upheaval – it is also relevant for crypto markets. Hear me out.

Western Union and modern banking

Noelle Acheson — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:11:58 GMT

“You can’t try to live safely, there’s no such thing as safety. Stick your neck out of your shell, then, and live fully.” – Ursula K. Le Guin ||

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

If you missed the livestream of Scott Melker’s Macro Monday show yesterday, where I joined Mike McGlone and Peter Tchir in a characteristically spicy debate about macro and crypto, you can see the replay here.

Production note: it’s a public holiday in much of Europe on Friday, so this newsletter will be skipping publication.

Because of the holiday, no “Press Publish” this week, but back next Friday! Meanwhile, check out my conversations with Irina Slav, Brady Dale and Christine Kim here.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Western Union and modern banking
Term of the day: Kharg Island
Markets: disbelief

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Western Union and modern banking

Meme coins and the crypto blues

Noelle Acheson — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:27:28 GMT

“There comes a time to join the side you’re on.” – Midge Decter ||

Hello everyone! I hope you got to disconnect this weekend. I spent part of yesterday walking around wide-eyed at an urban art festival in the Malasaña neighbourhood of my home city of Madrid – doors and walls and roller shutters and gates were brought to life in a riot of colour and creativity while we watched, just amazing.

Later today, I’m joining Scott Melker’s Macro Monday show, and I wonder if we’ll find anything to talk about 😏. We kick off at 9amEST/3pmCEST, and I think you’ll find the stream here – come join us!

And yesterday I was invited onto Asharq Business with Bloomberg to discuss crypto markets – with a live translator, of course. If any of you speak Arabic, here’s the clip.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Coming up this week: central banks!
Monday mood: Meme coins and the crypto blues
Term of the day: meme coin

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Coming up this week: central banks!

This week, all G7 central banks announce rate decisions, affecting the monetary policy of roughly half of the world’s economy. And, we get what will probably be Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s last press conference. Plus, some key economic data.

To kick off a central bank-heavy week, on Tuesday we get a decision on rates from the Bank of Japan, expected to hold steady for now.

We also get the latest report from the US Consumer Board consumer confidence survey, which is unlikely to deliver good news.

Wednesday gives us the official statement from the Federal Reserve’s rate setting committee (FOMC), also expected to hold steady given hints of inflationary pressures. Not that long ago, a rate cut at the April meeting was priced in as extremely likely – now, it looks like traders are expecting zero cuts this year.

(chart via Bloomberg)

Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference after the statement will no doubt feature some questions about the decision by the DOJ to close the investigation against him, leaving it instead to the Fed’s Office of Inspector General to get to the bottom of the refurbishment cost overruns. It would be uncharacteristic of him to say anything on this topic, but he surprised us by doing so at the last press conference, so who knows… We do want to know whether he plans to stay on as Fed governor once his term as Chair ends next month.

If the confirmation of Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh proceeds as expected, this will be Jerome Powell’s last appearance before the press corps in his current role. I have my frustrations with Powell, but he’s been great at the press conferences, I will miss him.

On Thursday, we get interest rate decisions from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.

And between Wednesday and Thursday, we get a glimpse of the economic impact so far of the Iran War via the preliminary (“flash”) data for inflation and GDP from key European economies and the Eurozone as a whole. It’s not looking great.

(chart via Bloomberg)

Also on Thursday, we get the US Personal Consumption Expenditure data – the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge – with the headline index growth expected to show a year-on-year acceleration from 2.8% to 3.3%, which would be the highest since 2023. The core index ex-food and energy) is forecast to move from 3.0% to 3.1%, which would tie with January for the highest rate since early 2024. This is not in a direction the FOMC will be comfortable with.

We get the preliminary read on US GDP growth. The consensus forecast according to Bloomberg has this accelerating from 0.5% quarter-on-quarter to 2.1%.

(chart via Bloomberg)

It’s worth pointing out that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model points to Q1 GDP growth of only 1.2% - still above Q4 2025’s growth of 0.5%, but lower than economists predict.

(chart via Atlanta Fed)

Preliminary data on US real consumer spending for Q1 is expected to show a quarter-on-quarter acceleration from 1.9% to 2.6%.

And (Thursday is quite the day!) we get the US Consumer Board’s leading index for February, which is still pre-war and therefore not affected by expectations of fuel and other commodity shortages. The level for January dropped 0.1%, while the coincident economic index continues to climb. Very strange.

(chart via the US Conference Board)

On Friday, we get the latest inflation figures from Japan, relevant for their interest rate outlook and therefore for the US bond market.

And, we get Institute of Supply Management data on US manufacturing activity. The overall Purchasing Managers Index is expected to show improvement, while the prices index is forecast to continue climbing.

Monday mood: Meme coins and the crypto blues

(what’s on my mind as we head into the week)

A high-profile event this weekend has inadvertently highlighted what I think is an overlooked explanation for the “crypto blues”, that jaded feeling of ennui that many long-time advocates have been struggling to put a finger on.

I’m not talking about the drama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Rather, I want to focus on Trump’s meme coin lunch held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

If that statement triggered an instinctive recoil, that’s part of the issue. Our distaste for meme coins is worth unpacking, as it’s not just about speculative tokens, nor is it just about blatant grift or influence abuse. There’s something else going on here.

WEEKLY – DeFi drama, media and first impressions

Noelle Acheson — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:51:08 GMT

Hello everyone! I hope you’re enjoying a glorious weekend wherever you are. Get away from screens if you can, they’re noisy.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful chat with Irina Slav on newslettering – you can see the playback here. 📽 “Press Publish” will be taking a break next Friday as it’s a holiday where I live, but you can see previous sessions here. 😊

Earlier this week, I was invited onto Scott Melker’s show The Wolf of All Streets where we talked about macro and bitcoin narratives as well as just how crazy things are. You can watch that playback here. 📽

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

In this newsletter:

Crypto, media and first impressions
DeFi disruption
Assorted links: State indoctrination, reading, climate change indifference, essential cinema, QR codes and narrative fallacies
Weekend: an iconic music video from the ‘80s, who do you recognize?

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

Some of the topics discussed in this week’s premium dailies:

Monday, April 20

Coming up this week: PMIs, retail sales and Warsh’s confirmation hearing
Monday mood: crypto, media and first impressions
Term of the day: Swap lines
Market: fooled again?

Tuesday, April 21

US Treasuries: how safe is safe?
Term of the day: Auction tail

Wednesday, April 22

Tokenization: Building frustration
Markets: ok, now what?
Term of the day: Helium
Macro: misleading US consumption

Thursday, April 23

DeFi disruption
Term of the day: DAO
Markets: a bewildering disconnect
Energy markets: a different world

Crypto, media and first impressions

Like many of you, I often wonder why smart economists and other academics insist crypto is exclusively for speculation and crime.

Last weekend, I listened to a Macro Musings podcast in which two storied and insightful economists discussed dollar dominance and how that could play out in coming years. (TLDR; slow erosion, potentially accelerated by poor policy decisions.)

One of them had some intriguing things to say about stablecoins and how expectations of high demand would most likely be disappointed; the other dismissed them as a conduit to the crypto market, which is about “criminality, money laundering”.

Regular readers will know by now that what people think about crypto markets is much less interesting to me than why they think it. I’m fascinated by intellectual biases and instinctive blocks, as well as what it would take to break through them.

When I hear highly intelligent people outright reject crypto, I’ve tended to assume that many – especially those in traditional finance – are afraid of a systemic change to the system that pays them, and that the economist profession (and academia more broadly) tends to encourage “safe” views. In other words, many have implicit incentives to not dig deeper into what can often be a distasteful sector.

But after chatting to experienced journalist Brady Dale about media and crypto (you can see the playback here), something else clicked: it’s not just the traditional finance culture that puts up cognitive walls. It’s also mainstream media, which has a stronger inherent and subliminal bias than it would like us to believe.

First, we have to remember that modern media business models depend on clicks for their ad revenue. And that shock and gossip get many, many more clicks than warm stories about people being lifted out of poverty, dissidents being able to transact after debanking, refugees fleeing with their savings on a pendrive, and so on.

So, mainstream headlines about crypto tend to focus on scams and scandals. Back in 2022-23, when people I’d meet people at social occasions found out I worked in crypto, they always only wanted to hear more about Sam Bankman-Fried. Today, many of my media interviews include at least one question about the unfortunately obvious grift.

Every now and then we do see solid reporting from mainstream outlets on how Bitcoin mining supports a wildlife park, finances the construction of power grids in remote locations, or helps a small nation harness its natural resources to boost its Treasury. But, while good journalism is supposed to dig deeper and uncover overlooked narratives, we all know that those stories don’t “perform” as well as the more salacious tales.

Oh, and there’s the price headlines highlighting moves to the upside (often with the tone “gamblers are doing quite well this week”) or downside (with a whiff of vindication).

It’s understandable, then, that the impression most mainstream observers have is that of scandal and speculation.

But the issue goes much deeper than the quest for clicks. Even among subscription sources, coverage is usually limited. After all, media has strong incentives to NOT write about the disruption of the system that maintains it. Individual cases of manipulation are fair (and profitable) game; but highlighting the corrupting creep of centralization and the widening gulf in inequality perpetuated by market structures could upset advertisers as well as readers. This goes a long way towards explaining the consistently snide crypto content from the Financial Times and others (although I do think Bloomberg does a good job).

There’s more. In our chat, Brady made the interesting and overlooked point that most of mainstream media is left-leaning. Most of the crypto industry isn’t. Of course, crypto has plenty of left-leaning advocates who eloquently highlight the need for a systemic re-think of financial rails. But the libertarian origins and the “hands off my money” ethos of the early crypto culture gave the sector a right-leaning tint that many journalists instinctively react to. Or if not the journalists, their editors.

And corporate policy has an impact. Most media organizations will have rules about journalists holding assets that they write about. Some outright forbid it in order to avoid bias – but that only creates a different kind of bias, one born of a lack of familiarity. Others insist writers disclose any crypto holdings, effectively putting a target on their back, inviting reputational harm (“biased!”) or worse. And those brave souls who choose to write something positive about crypto are most likely going to be accused of “pumping their bags” even if they don’t have any. It’s much safer to not write anything good about crypto, ever.

So, mainstream media has a stack of inbuilt incentives to focus on the seamy side of crypto. This is unfortunately relevant as most traditional finance types rely on mainstream media for their information about what’s new and what’s going on in the world. First impressions matter, and when it comes to the crypto industry, they’re usually not good.

Can this be changed? Well, media is changing. Slowly, but inevitably. And that will change the ingrained barriers. Crypto is becoming part of mainstream finance. When prices start climbing, all those who insist it’s going to zero will retreat into embarrassed silence. The energy consumption freak-outs have gone quiet. Also, more and more smart people are writing about the nuances, pointing out that – like all new technologies – crypto has both good and bad uses.

With time, media and education incentives will evolve.

Until then, however, people will continue to learn about crypto via headlines that are much more likely to focus on the cringe than on the opportunity. So, uninformed rejection is not surprising, and we should give some grace to those who have not yet invested the time in understanding the complexity. After all, most are busy people with so much to keep on top of. Sure, they could refrain from publicly opining on things they haven’t done much research on – but who among us does that these days?

Old media may have its incentive problems, but new media does too: opinions, even superficial ones, are the new currency.

✨ If you find this newsletter interesting or useful, would you mind sharing with friends and colleagues and nudging them to subscribe? I’d appreciate it! ✨

DeFi disruption

Hacks and other exploits are distressingly common in the crypto ecosystem, unsurprising given its basis in code and the genius of online manipulators. The hubris-fuelled confidence of the sector’s early days has fortunately faded (I remember being yelled at for questioning the Ethereum DAO back in the day) as by now we all know that complexity always has weak points. But the scramble for profit still incentivizes us to downplay the potential impact of any risk.

I rarely cover examples of losses from crime in this newsletter as they have come to feel more like background noise than foreground impact, but this past week gave us an unfortunate exception. On Saturday, Kelp DAO suffered an exploit that triggered significant contagion and uncomfortable controversy.

Much like how 2016’s Ethereum DAO drama led to a decentralized network taking a centralized decision to roll back supposedly immutable transactions, the Kelp DAO incident shines a harsh spotlight on decentralization and questions whether it can ever become a pillar of modern finance. A big difference between then and now is the sheer size of today’s DeFi market, and the participation or at least peripheral interest from large, sometimes seriously large, institutions.

Some scene-setting: Kelp DAO is a liquid restaking protocol built on Ethereum that takes users’ ETH, stakes it so they can earn part of the reward, and issues them another token backed by that ETH (rsETH) that can then be used in other DeFi apps on other blockchains to earn more yield.

Saturday’s exploit led to the theft of roughly 116,500 rsETH, worth about $290 million at the time, making it the largest crypto hack so far this year. The tokens were then deposited as collateral on decentralized lending platforms (mainly on the largest, Aave) to borrow significant amounts of ETH and related tokens, creating a mountain of bad debt. These borrowed tokens were then deployed across the ecosystem.

(I’m glossing over a lot of the details to avoid getting into deep cryptographic weeds that are extremely relevant for DeFi structures but ultimately not so much for the bigger picture.)

Within hours, Aave had frozen rsETH markets on the platform to contain the damage, but users started withdrawing loans for fear of liquidity issues. Since the exploit, the lending platform has lost over $10 billion of Total Value Locked (the amount held in the application’s smart contracts), a drop of more than 40%.

The drama escalated when Arbitrum’s Security Council took the decision to freeze roughly $71 million in related ETH (stolen tokens, or those borrowed using stolen collateral) on the Ethereum layer-2 chain.

The Aave freeze impacted specific contracts on the platform and fit within its responsibility to protect collateral. Fair enough, the right thing to do. The chain-wide Arbitrum freeze, on the other hand, opened up a whole new box of controversy.

Just how decentralized are blockchains when they can do that? Should a small group of people be able to override onchain finality? What does “immutable” mean when that becomes accepted? Then again, pushing back against crime is good, right?

The precedent is worrying on another level as well. In future hacks, will applications and blockchains be criticized or perhaps even held liable if they don’t immediately freeze involved funds? How long before the fear of repercussions makes token freezes and transaction rewinds a frequent occurrence? Just how “trusted” will onchain transactions be then?

Some have said this could herald the end of the tokenization push.

On the one hand, I get it. One of the main advantages of putting assets and money onchain is the interoperability, the ability to connect with each other and with smart contracts across the ecosystem. Without this kind of “modularity”, tokenization gets relegated to traditional finance on new rails. Put differently, if onchain assets can’t move freely and slot seamlessly into combinations and applications, tokenization becomes no more than an expensive database upgrade.

But, for most of the ongoing tokenization work, free movement is not on the table anyway. Most initiatives supported by traditional finance institutions – issuers, marketplaces, intermediaries – is happening on permissioned chains. It’s more about transaction efficiency and lowering the cost of issuance, not at all about freedom of movement, flexibility, disintermediation and open access.

This taps into a long-standing debate that has been attracting more heat recently: whether we should be building tomorrow’s financial system on public or private rails. There are valid arguments on each side. Personally, I don’t see why the argument has taken a black-or-white hue when the result will inevitably be shades of grey: tokenization will inevitably happen mainly on permissioned blockchains with some public blockchain characteristics, because neither institutions nor regulators will accept pure decentralization. That’s not how I think it should be – I’m totally behind the liberating and equalizing potential of public blockchains. But unrealistic idealism can hinder progress.

After all, traditional finance is married to the legal system and both need a specific entity to be responsible for errors. In decentralized finance, assigning responsibility is complex.

This debate ties into the class action suit against Circle, which chose to not freeze USDC that had clearly been stolen in the recent Drift exploit. Circle insists it can’t intervene without a court order or law enforcement request. To what extent should it be held responsible for preventing crime, and to what extent should it be held liable for not stopping it when it could have?

Taken together, the fallout from the Kelp DAO and the Drift incidents paint a picture of divided ideologies, and build on doubts whether the two can co-exist. Can we have a large financial market running on decentralized principles? Or do investors need the reassurance of some sort of protection before deploying capital? Do market infrastructure providers need liability limitations before providing much needed services and liquidity? Where should the boundaries between smooth connectivity and contagion risk be drawn? I’m sure some wise person somewhere said something along the lines of “freedom is great, until you are scared”.

These debates need to be had, and the risks of both centralized and decentralized approaches need to be examined. Unfortunately, the result will probably disappoint decentralization advocates. But they will hopefully continue to have niche markets in which to experiment, test new structures, and show centralized infrastructure that boundaries can be shifted.

See also:

Should stablecoin issuers be able to freeze accounts? (Apr 2026)

ASSORTED LINKS

Nicholas Carr writes about the fine line between information and indoctrination, what modern communication is for, what we should give up for the sake of security, and many more issues that are so much more fundamental to our society and our freedom than most realize. (Operation Gaslight, The New Atlantis)
An uplifting reminder of how important it is to schedule time to read, and some notes on how to get the most out of it. Personally, I find a half hour of morning reading – more if I manage to wake up early – goes a long way towards quietening the noise of the day’s news flow. (On depth and lightness, A Reading Life)
Quico Toro on why the climate change crisis prevention movement was doomed from the start, but especially now. (The year we stopped talking about climate, One Percent Brighter)
From last year but a new discovery for me, one that gives the clearest answer I’ve seen to a question that has long been on my mind: how do QR codes work? (How The Heck Do QR Codes Work?, PerThirtySix)
Gurwinder on the biological and technological origins of narrative fallacy, and on how a glut of information doesn’t make us better informed, it makes us more susceptible to illusions. (The Electronic Starfield, The Prism)

“The brain evolved for a low-information world, and is overloaded in a high-information one. Like someone with dark-adapted eyes suddenly switching on the lights, we’ve become dazzled by overillumination. And the online world has pivoted to exploit it.”

In one of my earlier Assorted Links this month, I featured an epoch-spanning reading list curated by Ted Gioia of The Honest Broker. Kyle Worley took it upon himself to curate one for cinema, pairing his choices with Gioia’s recommended books. How many of these have you seen? (A Cinema Supplement to Gioia’s Humanities Program, Sacred Slang)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

(in this section, I share stuff that has NOTHING to do with macro or crypto, ‘cos it’s the weekend and life is interesting)

This video popped into my head earlier this week – a recording of “We Are The World”, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and sung by… well, just about everybody who was anybody in the 1980s’ music scene. How many faces can you put a name to?

Press Publish with Noelle Acheson and Irina Slav

Noelle Acheson — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:48:13 GMT

Available for iOS and Android

DeFi disruption

Noelle Acheson — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:26:31 GMT

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ||

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all well! This week has gone by SO fast…

Yesterday, I chatted to Scott Melker on his live The Wolf of All Streets show – you can catch the replay here.

🌼

Production note: no newsletter tomorrow due to a conflict, sorry, but do tune in to my Substack Live chat with Irina Slav where we discuss newslettering. We kick off at 1pm CEST / 7am EST (more details below).

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

DeFi disruption
Term of the day: DAO
Markets: a bewildering disconnect
Energy markets: a different world

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

✨Press Publish with Irina Slav✨

Come join me for a “Press Publish” Substack Live this Friday, April 24th, at 7am EST / 1pm CEST when I talk to energy expert Irina Slav.

🎥

We’re not going to discuss crypto nor energy, at least not this time. Rather, we’ll talk about why Irina does what she does, her process, how she manages to juggle so much, what works and what doesn’t, and more.

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

DeFi disruption

Tokenization: Building frustration

Noelle Acheson — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:39:11 GMT

“Forget the cliché that if it’s free, “You are the product.” You are not the product; you are the abandoned carcass. The “product” derives from the surplus that is ripped from your life.” – Shoshana Zuboff ||

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all well.

In a few minutes from when you receive this, I’m joining Scott Melker on his The Wolf of All Streets show – come join us! Barring any changes, we kick off at 9am ET / 3pm CEST, and I think you should be able to see it here.

📽

Production note: some choppy publication coming up. No newsletter this Friday (but do tune in to my Substack Live chat with Irina Slav!! more details below). And I’ll be skipping next Friday’s due to a national holiday where I live.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Tokenized equities hit ~$1B in supply since launching in mid 2025. The market structure is more interesting than the milestone.

Allium’s latest research covers where liquidity actually lives, how tokenized prices compare to traditional equities, overnight price discovery, and why ~90% of volume is outside the US.

For fintech platforms, exchanges, institutional investors, and builders evaluating the tokenized equities opportunity.

→ Read the report: https://www.allium.so/reports/allium-tokenized-equities-report-q1-2026

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Tokenization: Building frustration
Markets: ok, now what?
Term of the day: Helium
Macro: misleading US consumption

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

✨Press Publish with Irina Slav✨

Come join me for a Substack Live this Friday, April 24th, at 7am EST / 1pm CEST when I talk to energy expert Irina Slav.

One thing you need to know about Irina, other than her charm and depth: she writes. A lot. With punch and humour and flow. There’s her Irina Slav on Energy newsletter, which is how I discovered her work (and was the first Substack I paid for). Then I found out she also writes for OilPrice.com, several articles a day. And she has two other newsletters, both enchanting and on wildly different topics.

So, come and join us for a chat about why she does what she does, how she manages to juggle so much, what advice she’d give anyone starting out or struggling to grow in Substack, and more.

📽

And if you missed my Substack Live “Press Publish” session with Brady Dale on Friday, where we talked about media, newslettering, Substack, platforms in general, and a whole lot more, you can catch the replay here. Plus, check out the playback of the session I did with Christine Kim about her journey from big-brand research into self-publishing, how she gets so much done, what she’d do differently, and more.

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Tokenization: Building frustration

Back in February, I wrote about a letter sent by eight frustrated European tokenization firms to European regulators detailing ways the much-needed changes to the DLT Pilot Regime could be implemented immediately.

These changes are already included in a market reform bill currently working its arduous way through the halls of EU headquarters – but so are 18 other measures unrelated to crypto. Debate is ongoing, with the target of getting an agreement some time next year and full implementation in… 2030. Yes, four years from now.

The desired changes to the tokenization framework are relatively uncontroversial and easy to implement with simple word changes to existing laws – no big re-think is needed. They include lifting limits on issuance and volumes, extending term limits on licenses, and expanding the range of eligible assets.

But, it seems that the letter got no reaction from legislators.

So now, another letter has been sent, this time signed by 39 market participants, including many large tradfi names including Nasdaq and Borse Stuttgart.

US Treasuries: how safe is safe?

Noelle Acheson — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:54:43 GMT

“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.” – Stephen Jay Gould ||

Hi everyone! What was I thinking… this morning I started poking at something I read last week regarding the US Treasury market and next thing I know I’m deep in the weeds, trying to claw my way out. That’s why this is a bit late going out, and why there’s no market comment (although the Treasury market situation is certainly relevant).

🌼

Production note: some choppy publication coming up. No newsletter this Friday (but do tune in to my Substack Live chat with Irina Slav, more details below). And I’ll be skipping next Friday’s due to a national holiday where I live.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Event: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST – TODAY!! Last chance to register!

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

US Treasuries: how safe is safe?
Term of the day: Auction tail

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

✨Press Publish with Irina Slav✨

Come join me for a Substack Live this Friday, April 24th, at 7am EST / 1pm CEST when I talk to energy expert Irina Slav.

So, come and join us for a chat about why she does what she does, how she manages to juggle so much, what advice she’d give anyone starting out or struggling to grow in Substack, and more.

📽

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

US Treasuries: how safe is safe?

When a former US Treasury Secretary uses the phrase “break the glass”, it’s worth asking why. Sure, good sound bites get attention, but that’s unlikely to be the motive here, this particular individual gets plenty of that anyway. So, I dug a bit deeper.

Last week, Henry Paulson gave an interview to Bloomberg in which he urged the US Treasury to prepare “an emergency break-the-glass plan which is targeted and short-term, on the shelf, so it’s ready to go when we hit the wall”.

Note that Paulson uses the word “when”, not “if”.

This is coming from the man who led the US Treasury during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. But as he explains, back then the US had some fiscal leeway to deal with the credit meltdown – government debt was around 60% of GDP. Today, with government debt at over 120% and climbing, it doesn’t.

(US debt/GDP, chart via the St. Louis Fed)

What’s more, the GFC was triggered by opaque and risky credit. There’s a strong chance that any Treasury market ructions in coming months or years would be triggered by the Treasury market itself, further constraining any potential fiscal response.

Paulson points out that the US has a lot of distractions at the moment, such as the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine. But he argues the fiscal deficit should not get pushed into the background as it’s not going away. And sooner or later, he implies, investors will start to lose confidence in US debt.

There’s an argument to be made that the rally in the gold price over the past year is a sign that has started.

(gold price $/oz, chart via TradingView)

There are others, none of them five-alarm fires yet but all worth keeping an eye on. I’ll highlight a few, and then pull on why all this matters both for crypto markets and for what’s happening on Capitol Hill today.

Crypto, media and first impressions

Noelle Acheson — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:21:18 GMT

“Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused.” – Richard Perle ||

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend – glorious spring weather where I am, the flowers are starting to bloom and the air smells amazing.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Event: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Coming up this week: PMIs, retail sales and Warsh’s confirmation hearing
Monday mood: crypto, media and first impressions
Term of the day: Swap lines
Market: fooled again?

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

✨Press Publish with Irina Slav✨

Come join me for a Substack Live next Friday, April 24th, at 7am EST / 1pm CEST when I talk to energy expert Irina Slav.

So, come and join us for a chat about why she does what she does, how she manages to juggle so much, what advice she’d give anyone starting out or struggling to grow in Substack, and more.

🎥

And if you missed my Substack Live “Press Publish” session with Brady Dale yesterday, where we talked about media, newslettering, Substack, platforms in general, and a whole lot more, you can catch the replay here.

(And, yes, I said “Crypto is Macro Now podcast” in the intro, I meant newsletter – it had been a long week!)

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Coming up this week:

Aside from geopolitics, diplomatic drama and the drumbeat of Q1 earnings, we have a relatively thin week coming up for market news.

On Tuesday, Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh will appear before the Senate Banking committee for his initial confirmation hearing. It’s still unclear whether Senator Tillis will keep his promise to delay the confirmation until Chair Powell’s DOJ investigation is wound up. Meanwhile, attention will be on how Warsh answers the inevitable questions on central bank independence, the inflation outlook, stablecoins and more.

Also on Tuesday, we get US retail sales for March, expected to surge to 1.3% month-on-month (vs 0.6% in February), largely due to higher expenditure on gasoline.

On Thursday, we get a wave of purchasing manager indices (PMIs) that will give more insight into how the Iran War is impacting the global economy. Forecasts are for dips across the board.

Monday mood: crypto, media and first impressions

(what’s on my mind as we head into the week)

Like many of you, I often wonder why smart economists and other academics insist crypto is exclusively for speculation and crime.

Over the weekend, I listened to a podcast (link further down) in which two storied and insightful economists discussed dollar dominance and how that could play out in coming years. (TLDR; slow erosion, potentially accelerated by poor policy decisions.)

But after chatting to experienced journalist Brady Dale on Friday about media and crypto (you can see the playback here), something else clicked: it’s not just the traditional finance culture that puts up cognitive walls. It’s also mainstream media, which has a stronger inherent and subliminal bias than it would like us to believe.

Every now and then we do see solid reporting from mainstream outlets on how Bitcoin mining finances a wildlife park, or how a small nation is harnessing its natural resources to boost its Treasury. But, while good journalism is supposed to dig deeper and uncover overlooked narratives, we all know that those stories don’t “perform” as well as the more salacious tales.

Oh, and there’s the price headlines highlighting moves to the upside (often with the tone “gamblers are doing quite well this week”) or downside (with a whiff of vindication).

It’s understandable, then, that the impression most mainstream observers have is that of scandal and speculation.

WEEKLY - Just how "digital" is Bitcoin?

Noelle Acheson — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:17:01 GMT

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all doing well and enjoying some blue skies wherever you are.

You’re reading the free weekly Crypto is Macro Now, where I re-share a couple of the week’s premium posts as well as some non-crypto and non-macro links of interest.

💮 If you’re not a subscriber to the premium dailies, I hope you’ll consider becoming one? You’ll get a lot more out of these newsletters… 💮

Subscribe now

🎥 I had a great chat earlier this week with Maggie Lake on her Talking Markets show – if you missed the livestream, you can see the playback here. 🎥

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

AEvent: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

In this newsletter:

Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?
A European USD stablecoin gets a boost
Weekend: an iconic video from the ‘90s

(No Assorted Links this week, sorry, a time squeeze.)

✨Press Publish with Irina Slav ✨

Come join me for a Substack Live next Friday, April 24th, at 7am EST / 1pm CEST when I talk to energy expert Irina Slav.

So, come and join us for a chat about why she does what she does, how she manages to juggle so much, what advice she’d give anyone starting out or struggling to grow in Substack, and more.

(And, yes, I said “Crypto is Macro Now podcast” in the intro, I meant newsletter – it had been a long week!)

Plus, check out the playback of the session I did with Christine Kim about her journey from big-brand research into self-publishing, how she gets so much done, what she’d do differently, and more.

Some of the topics discussed in this week’s premium dailies:

Monday, April 13

Coming up this week: inflation, forecasts, earnings
Term of the day: Mythos
Monday mood: Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?
Markets: a whiplash of a weekend
Macro: US CPI

Tuesday, April 14

Term of the day: quantum computer
Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?
Macro: why US consumer confidence matters

Wednesday, April 15

Term of the day: Producer Price Index
Nauru: where history meets technology
Markets: war over?
Macro: US PPI

Thursday, April 16

A European USD stablecoin gets a boost
Markets: the professional investor mood
Term of the day: Beige Book
Macro: what the Beige Book is saying

Friday, April 17

Should stablecoin issuers be able to freeze accounts?
Term of the day: Hezbollah
Markets: what conflict?

Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?

Many pixels have been spilled about the performance of BTC since the war began, some of them in this newsletter: the surprising resilience, the lack of volatility, the quiet derivatives market, the vulnerability to a sharp stock market adjustment. But, to be honest, I’m not giving much thought to where the price goes in the short-term – there’s no point as war tends to mask fundamental trends with decibels of noise.

I’m much more interested in what’s next, and how that will shape and be shaped by our understanding of networks. This is changing more than most realize. While we’re distracted by explosions and commodity prices and global choke points and off-the-rails social media diplomacy, our collective perception of the digital and physical planes of the global economy has been shifting.

For most of this century, we’ve assumed the world was going digital. Finance, money, entertainment, even relationships => digital, “flat”, connected.

Those of us that rearchitected our careers and lives around this felt like we were ahead of the curve, creating the future, more forward-thinking than those stuck in analog ways.

We could argue about when the cracks in this worldview started to show. It could have been COVID, when we realized we didn’t want everything to be digital, remote, isolated. It could be the Russian invasion of Ukraine, giving most of us in the West our first bitter taste of kinetic war on our doorstep. I think the hostility of the previous US Administration to a new emerging form of digital finance played a part, lifting the veil on the imperative and the cost of centralized control. The election of Donald Trump as President of the US, both times, can be seen as a big middle finger to the “connected” layer. And now, we have the mother of all supply shocks in energy and its derivatives headed our way.

Plus, we sent people into space, and they came back safely. That’s a triumph of atoms over bits if ever I saw one, and there’s something about seeing our planet through the eyes of people floating hundreds of thousands of kilometres above it that drives home the perfect geometry of where we live.

It feels like there’s a subtle shift in the overall vibe away from digital and towards physical, away from a conviction that atoms will matter less and less, and towards a realization that they’ll matter more.

We’re seeing it in markets as well. Indices of semiconductor manufacturers have significantly outperformed those of internet services over pretty much any recent time period. Meta went all-in on the metaverse but is now rapidly scaling back. The once-hot NFT market has been quiet for years. Mythos is driving home how software is vulnerable. Now, when I hear the term “tech company”, I think of robotics before platforms.

And those who have been insisting AI will bring “abundance” are sounding less confident today as datacentre buildout runs into the wall of energy and hardware scarcity.

So, if indeed we are moving into a rediscovered appreciation for “stuff”, where does that leave the long-term outlook for Bitcoin, which is undeniably and exclusively digital?

A caveat before I sketch out why Bitcoin both is and isn’t: this is not a well-thought-out thesis yet, this is just my off-the-cuff musing. Feedback and pushback are welcome.

With that out of the way, here goes:

I think this is where Bitcoin starts to break away from the “digital finance” pack. For decades, electronic networks have fed the financialization of the global economy as new investment and leveraged products emerge faster and faster to keep up with the speed of database dollars. The need to maintain these networks led to greater centralization of control, which in turn facilitated compliance-mandated gating, exclusion and more control.

Along comes Bitcoin, a new type of network that breaks the paradigm of centralization and offers up a new type of asset that defies categorization.

But habit dies hard, especially when there are economic incentives to keep it going. And so Bitcoin became a “risk asset” or “digital gold” or whatever term helps traditional investors put it into a familiar bucket while “digital finance” gets to work doing its packaging thing.

Even those who chose to focus on Bitcoin’s unique properties stressed how it brought direct ownership and property rights (physical!) into the digital realm. The “digital” was always the dominant layer.

But what if we started to look at Bitcoin the other way around? Less as provable scarcity on a digital network, and more as digital convenience layered onto a scarce asset?

These two approaches may sound exactly the same, but they’re not: the emphasis is different in each.

If I’m right and the zeitgeist is changing, “digital” will become less dominant as a narrative, more a powerful layer of convenience than a reason for being unto itself. Here is where Bitcoin can shine relative to other “digital-first” assets that exist because of the convenience and the networked service they provide. Not only is Bitcoin the only provably scarce asset with hard property rights and no centralized control that can move on digital networks. It’s also one of the very few digital assets that does not need permission to exist but that does anyway – by “digital asset”, I mean any asset that exists digitally, on any electronic network, not just in crypto.

Most digital assets were created to do something. Bitcoin just is. It exists in that limbo between physical and digital, bringing properties of each to the other.

And in a world moving towards appreciating scarcity and protection over convenience and speed, this will come to matter more.

✨ If you enjoy these newsletters, would you mind sharing with friends and colleagues and nudging them to subscribe? I’d appreciate it! ✨

A European USD stablecoin gets a boost

This week, we got news that the first bank-issued US dollar stablecoin to be natively integrated into the MetaMask wallet… is from a European bank.

The USDCV stablecoin, issued by Société Générale’s FORGE subsidiary, will appear among a shortlist of stablecoins within the MetaMask wallet, on both the mobile and desktop apps. What’s more, reports suggest it has been given a prominent position: fourth, behind MetaMask’s own stablecoin MUSD and the industry giants USDT and USDC. It comes in way ahead of PayPal’s PYUSD, even though it is by all accounts still a small player – a market cap of $26 million, and only 245 holders.

There’s an interesting takeaway here, but first some background:

Société Générale was the first large global bank to issue a stablecoin on a public blockchain, with the launch of the euro-backed EURCV token on Ethereum back in April 2023. Since then, it has expanded to several other chains, including Solana, Stellar and the XRP Ledger, and today has a market cap of $125 million, making it the second largest euro stablecoin behind Circle’s EURC.

While initially limited to whitelisted users, in 2024 it checked all the boxes for full regulatory compliance to allow free transfer, enabling its use in DeFi applications.

In June 2025, the bank launched a US dollar sibling – USDCV – on Ethereum and Solana, with BNY Mellon as the reserve custodian. For now, this is only available outside the US.

Starting in September last year, both EURCV and USDCV were onboarded into popular DeFi apps such as Uniswap and Morpho. And now, USDCV gets a major DeFi boost with the MetaMask integration.

The boost could be significant – MetaMask has over 100 million outstanding wallets and over 30 million active monthly users.

So, why USDCV and not EURCV, which is much larger and more liquid?

The likely answer is that global DeFi users are not interested in a euro stablecoin. For an attractive positioning, it would have to be a US dollar token.

No wonder the ECB is concerned about the dollarization of the stablecoin universe.

When trading between each other, European entities are likely to prefer euro stablecoins, and these are seeing significant growth – the market cap of EURCV has jumped 65% since the beginning of the year, that of Circle’s EURC is up 15%. For context, the market cap of the ecosystem’s giant USDT is down slightly, and that of USDC is up only around 4%.

(EURCV market cap, chart via CoinGecko)

But beyond intra-Europe use, and certainly in the DeFi world, dollars are preferred. The unspoken question is what the EU will try to do in the future to tilt that equation.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

(in this section, I share stuff that has NOTHING to do with macro or crypto, ‘cos it’s the weekend and life is interesting)

After the chaos of the week, I’m in the mood for some nostalgia – and for some reason I’ve had George Michael shimmying around my brain this morning.

It’s not just the poignancy and rhythm of his music (and that voice!) that keeps his vibe fresh even today; it’s the stunning design of many of his videos.

The official video for “Freedom! ‘90” has to be one of the most iconic productions from any modern artist – I’m not saying it’s the best music video ever, but right now I’m struggling to think of one that had a bigger visual impact when it came out in 1990.

The grimy grandeur of the old apartment offsetting the newness and the impossible beauty of the models … the flames and the water … the play with light … and, perhaps most resonant to many of us at the time, the underlying message of shedding your past to create the life you want.

Almost 40 years later, it still feels timeless.

Press Publish with Noelle Acheson and Brady Dale

Noelle Acheson — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:59:20 GMT

Available for iOS and Android

Should stablecoin issuers be able to freeze accounts?

Noelle Acheson — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:32:08 GMT

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ||

Hi all, and Happy Friday!

✨I hope you’ll join me later today in my Substack Live chat with Brady Dale, who writes the Front Stage Exit newsletter. We’ll discuss his process, his take on mainstream media vs independent publishing, what has been working well for him, where he sees media going and more. ✨

There has been some flaffing about with the link to the session, sorry about that, Substack is NOT as intuitive on this as it could be. But this 👇 is the link as of now, and a reminder will be sent out a few minutes before we go live.

https://open.substack.com/live-stream/166843?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell

🎥 So, tune in to “Press Publish” at 11amET / 5pm CET! 🎥

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Event: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Should stablecoin issuers be able to freeze accounts?
Term of the day: Hezbollah
Markets: what conflict?

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Should stablecoin issuers be able to freeze accounts?

I don’t usually get into the weeds of legal debate, but this one is interesting as it impacts both how stablecoins will operate at a global level, and their potential demand.

On April 1st, the Drift Protocol – the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Solana – lost roughly 50% of the total value in its smart contracts, in an exploit attributed to North Korea. The operation was sophisticated, involving hackers posing as collaborators in a long con that began months earlier and ended with more than $280 million worth of tokens being drained from vaults. These were then converted into USDC on Ethereum via Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), and shuffled off to various mixers to cover their tracks.

Almost immediately, Circle started fielding accusations that it could have frozen the involved stablecoins, enabling Drift to recover the funds. CEO Jeremy Allaire has defended the company’s decision to not do so by insisting that it can’t go around freezing accounts without being officially directed to do so by law enforcement or the courts.

Technically, it seems he’s correct – I’m not a lawyer, but the GENIUS Act requires stablecoin issuers to comply with official requests to freeze or even seize tokens. It doesn’t say anything about doing so based on suspicion or community pressure. In fact, from what I gather, freezing funds because they “look stolen” could leave Circle vulnerable to claims of wrongful interference.

But… but…

In the case of the Drift Protocol exploit, it was obvious what was happening. Given the transparency of blockchains, the token drains were noticed almost immediately, Drift confirmed the exploit, and onchain forensic analysts got to work right away. Money was being “laundered” on a Circle platform, using a Circle token, and Circle had the power to stop it but didn’t do so for fear of legal liability.

Circle kept within the letter of the law, but broke with the spirit of crime prevention.

This is especially jarring, coming just days after it was criticized for freezing 16 seemingly unrelated hot wallets as part of an ongoing US civil case that has been “sealed”, which means no details or explanation have been or will be given. A couple of days later, some of these were unfrozen, confirming the impression that the firm had acted with a broad and possibly unjustified brush.

And rival Tether has often taken a more proactive approach – onchain investigator ZachXBT recently compiled a long list of exploits and theft where Tether froze funds almost immediately but Circle did nothing.

Yesterday, a hack was reported on Rhea Finance; Tether managed to freeze roughly half of the proceeds (while seizing the opportunity for a dig at its competitor).

The key here is “safe harbor” – can a money transmitter be penalized for freezing suspicious funds? The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) has a “safe harbor” provision for Suspicious Activity Reports, as in no penalty for over-reporting, but it’s not clear whether this extends to actions on funds. But would a court rule against an entity proactively trying to prevent money laundering, especially since guilty parties are unlikely to come forward with a complaint? Parties that do protest and are deemed innocent can have token access restored in minutes.

In contrast, getting court orders can take days or weeks, impractical given the speed with which onchain funds move. Money launderers can hack protocols and whisk the funds away before the relevant law enforcement officials have answered the phone. It’s hard to see regulators supporting that system.

After all, a bank can freeze an account based on suspicion, without needing a court order or legal equivalent. Consumers have recourse if the bank can be shown to have acted unreasonably, or if the freeze is unnecessarily prolonged. But, it seems that banks currently have more leeway to prevent crime than stablecoin issuers. That makes no sense.

Yesterday, this case got even more interesting. Circle has now been served with a class action lawsuit for its inaction in the Drift exploit. Here’s an excerpt from the statement by the presenting lawyers:

“After the exploit, attackers allegedly bridged more than $230 million in stolen USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s own infrastructure — across 100+ transactions over eight hours. Circle allegedly took no action to freeze the funds, despite having the technical and contractual authority to do so.
As our lawsuit details, Circle has previously amassed over $420 million in alleged compliance failures, after repeatedly allowing unfettered use of its stablecoin and bridge services during large breaches involving millions of dollars in misappropriated funds.”

So, what now? Circle may settle out of court, but this is a hefty sum. Or, they may let this go to trial, in the hopes of establishing a legal precedent to guide and protect future action.

This is an especially delicate topic for the emerging world of DeFi, which will need to find better protection against this sort of theft if it wants to call itself “institutional grade”.

But for DeFi, precautionary freezes are a double-edged sword. Imagine the Drift Protocol exploiters deposited some of their USDC into an Aave lending pool – should Circle then freeze the whole pool? Or imagine proceeds from another crime were deposited into Drift’s vaults which were then frozen (either by Drift or the relevant token issuers), disabling any reaction to market moves and potentially adversely impacting innocent participants. Who should be given “freeze just in case” authorization, and how far should “safe harbor” extend?

At stake is regulatory support for decentralized protocols and expanded stablecoin use. Also at stake is just how “decentralized” protocols can be while enjoying some sort of legal and financial protection. And, even if regulators decide the risk of fast crime is not their problem, or are convinced by decentralization purists that a light touch is the way forward, institutions could well choose to stay away, depriving the ecosystem of some of its liquidity.

Meanwhile, business decisions have consequences in an increasingly competitive field. Yesterday, Drift announced a collaboration with Tether and “other partners” involving a contribution of $150 million to cover part of the loss – this includes a $100 million revenue-linked credit facility, an ecosystem grant, and loans to market makers to fund a user recovery pool. It also involves a move to relaunch with USDT (not USDC) “at the centre”.

A European USD stablecoin gets a boost

Noelle Acheson — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:11:27 GMT

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” – H. L. Mencken ||

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves – so much going on.

🎥 Come join me for a Substack Live session tomorrow at 5pm CEST (11am EST) when I talk to Brady Dale about his newsletter writing process, the lifestyle changes between creative freedom and mainstream brands, the future of media and more. 🎥

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Event: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

A European USD stablecoin gets a boost
Markets: the professional investor mood
Term of the day: Beige Book
Macro: what the Beige Book is saying

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

✨ Press Publish ✨

Come join me for a Substack Live this Friday, April 17th, at 11am ET when I talk to Brady Dale, who recently left a high-profile newsletter writing gig at Axios to branch out on his own – we’ll dive into why, how self-production is different, what advice he’d give anyone thinking of doing the same, where media is going, and more.

A European USD stablecoin gets a boost

Yesterday, we got news that the first bank-issued US dollar stablecoin to be natively integrated into the MetaMask wallet… is from a European bank.

There’s an interesting takeaway here, but first some background:

Nauru: where history meets technology

Noelle Acheson — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:57:41 GMT

“In every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself.” – Neil Postman ||

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well – I just want to take a moment to say thank you so much for being here. You are appreciated.

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

Event: BCG x Allium Webinar - The Truth About Stablecoin Payments

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm EST

Speakers: Inderpreet Batra (BCG Global Head of Fintech & Payments), Ethan Chan (CEO, Allium), Max Zevin (BCG MD & Partner)

Topics:

What’s driving institutional interest right now, and how regulation (GENIUS Act, MiCA) is shaping the conversation
What Allium’s stablecoin data reveals: use case breakdown (B2B, C2C, cross-border), blockchain distribution, and why volume estimates vary so widely across reports
Implications for different players: banks, fintechs, PSPs, and where to focus
Where the market goes over the next 12–24 months

Register: https://bcg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gm6eFezTSQC6gaNw5aLamQ

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Term of the day: Producer Price Index
Nauru: where history meets technology
Markets: war over?
Macro: US PPI

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

✨ Press Publish ✨

Come join me on Friday, April 17th, at 11am ET when I talk to Brady Dale, who recently left a high-profile newsletter writing gig at Axios to branch out on his own – we’ll dive into why, how self-production is different, what advice he’d give anyone thinking of doing the same, where media is going, and more.

(Some of you may have gotten an invite when I scheduled the session earlier today, and I got the date wrong, sorry – still getting the hang of this – 🎥 it’s on the 17th 🎥, not the 18th.)

Term of the day: Producer Price Index

The Producer Price Index (PPI) is actually not one index but rather a family of over 10,000 indices that track the change in prices received by domestic producers for the sale of goods and services. The data is provided by around 16,000 establishments selected via sampling that provide the data on the Tuesday of the week containing the 13^th of each month.

The composite measure is a useful complement to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in that it paints a picture of wholesale rather than consumer inflation – the CPI tracks what consumers pay, while the PPI tracks what sellers receive, for both intermediate and finished goods. In between the two indices are distribution costs, corporate margins, taxes, government subsidies and more.

Another key difference is that the PPI only covers domestic production, while the CPI also includes imports. The CPI aims to measure the cost of living, while the PPI measures prices received by businesses. It’s more a leading indicator than the CPI in that it reveals cost changes at the production level rather than at the final-purchase stage. For that reason, it’s also more sensitive to changes in commodity prices.

Nauru: where history meets technology

A curious news item caught my eye yesterday: Nauru has appointed a long-time Bitcoiner from Switzerland as International Trade Commissioner.

Some background is needed here. Nauru is the world’s third smallest country, a tiny island (population ~12,000) in Micronesia, in the Pacific Ocean north of Australia.

Once upon a time, it was known for its phosphate mines which brought considerable wealth to the island in the 1960s-70s but which eventually stripped the atoll of its key resource. So, it turned to offshore banking, licensing around 400 foreign banks by the early 1990s, with little oversight or record keeping. You can imagine what most of these banks were up to.

In 2000, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklisted Nauru as one of 15 “non-cooperative countries and territories” in the fight against money laundering, which had the immediate effect of greater scrutiny, longer transaction delays and a reluctance from global banks to handle Nauru-related business.

Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?

Noelle Acheson — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:08:59 GMT

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller ||

Hello everyone! How can it be only Tuesday…

🎥 I had a great chat yesterday with Maggie Lake on her Talking Markets show – if you missed the livestream, you can see the playback here. 🎥

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

As traditional finance and crypto converge, trusted data is the missing infrastructure layer. Allium provides this data foundation for teams like Visa, Stripe and Grayscale.

The latest whitepaper published with BCG, Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers, examines how stablecoins are being used in the real economy today. The analysis estimates $350–550B in on-chain payments in 2025, led by $150–230B in B2B activity, with consumer flows contributing another $200–320B.

If you’re producing institutional crypto research or analytics, start with trusted data. Explore a live demo.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Term of the day: quantum computer
Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?
Macro: why US consumer confidence matters

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

✨ Press Publish ✨

Come join me for a Substack Live chat next Friday, April 17th, at 11am ET when I talk to Brady Dale, who recently left a high-profile newsletter writing gig at Axios to branch out on his own – we’ll dive into why, how self-production is different, what advice he’d give anyone thinking of doing the same, where media is going, and more.

Term of the day: quantum computer

It turns out that today is World Quantum Day, who knew that was even a thing. It’s celebrated on April 14th because of Planck’s constant, a fundamental ratio in quantum physics which, when expressed in electron volts per second, is 4.1356677×10⁻¹⁵, or 4.14×10⁻¹⁵ should you choose to round (4/14, geddit?).

So, today’s term is “quantum computer”, tool that harnesses quantum mechanics (the behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles) to solve problems traditional computers can’t. Traditional computers use increasingly small electrical circuits and combinations of bits that are either 1 or 0; quantum computers rely on qubits, which can be 1, 0 or both, and on “entanglement” which links the state of distinct particles. This makes them not just faster for certain types of computations, but also capable of effectively evaluating several possibilities “in parallel”.

Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?

Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?

Noelle Acheson — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:09:30 GMT

“Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems.” – Karl Popper ||

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend and stayed away from screens as much as possible.

🎥 Later today, I’m chatting with Maggie Lake on her The Market House show – we kick off at 4pm ET, come join us! You can tune in on Substack, or via her YouTube channel. 🎥

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

As traditional finance and crypto converge, trusted data is the missing infrastructure layer. Allium provides this data foundation for teams like Visa, Stripe and Grayscale.

If you’re producing institutional crypto research or analytics, start with trusted data. Explore a live demo.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.

Coming up this week: inflation, forecasts, earnings
Definitions: Mythos
Monday mood: Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?
Markets: a whiplash of a weekend
Macro: US CPI

If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

✨ Press Publish with Christine Kim

So, I did it! On Friday I launched a Substack live series 🎥 – not on crypto nor macro (coming soon!), but on writing newsletters.

If you missed the livestream, you can still learn from Christine’s experience and courage here:

✨NEXT UP: 🎥

Come join me next Friday, April 17th, at 11am ET when I talk to Brady Dale, who recently left a high-profile newsletter writing gig at Axios to branch out on his own – we’ll dive into why, how self-production is different, what advice he’d give anyone thinking of doing the same, where media is going, and more.

Coming up this week: inflation, forecasts, earnings

On Monday, the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank kick off in Washington DC, with global policymakers and economists gathering until Saturday.

This will be the second one in a row in which attendees and policymakers grapple with the familiar geoeconomic pieces up in the air – last year it was tariffs and their impact on global trade, this year it’s the impact on global trade supply issues stemming from the conflict in the Middle East.

Also on Monday, Goldman Sachs kicks off Q1 earnings season. This week will be heavy on numbers from the big banks – I’ll be paying more attention to what the CEOs are saying in the earnings calls, as banks tend to have a unique insight into business activity.

On Tuesday, we get the IMF’s updated economic forecasts along with a report on global financial stability.

Also on Tuesday, we get the US Producer Price Index (PPI) for March, the first post-Iran war read on wholesale inflation. The headline index is expected to show a whopping month-on-month increase of 1.1%, the highest since March 2022 – back then, the fed funds rate was around 0.3% (vs today’s 3.6%). The core index is expected to increase by 0.4%, a deceleration relative to last month’s 0.5%, but still notably higher than the 12-month average.

(chart via Bloomberg)

On Wednesday, it’s the turn of March US import and export price indices, with both expected to show a sharp acceleration on a year-on-year basis.

And we get the Fed’s Beige Book, with anecdotal accounts of what the regional central banks are hearing from local businesses.

Also, Wednesday is the US tax filing deadline, which often comes with portfolio changes and possible market volatility as investors sell assets to meet capital gains liabilities.

On Thursday, China releases its Q1 GDP report, forecast to show annual growth accelerating from 4.5% to 4.8%. Growth in Chinese retail sales for March is expected to decelerate from 2.8% to 2.3%. And China’s unemployment rate is forecast to drop from 5.3% to 5.2%.

Also on Thursday, we get US industrial production for March, forecast to accelerate from 1.4% year-on-year to 1.8%. Manufacturing output is expected to accelerate from 1.3% year-on-year to 2.0%.

Term of the day: Mythos

Mythos is the name given to Anthropic’s latest AI model, the first to trigger emergency meetings at the highest levels of financial oversight – over the weekend, both US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met with the heads of large US banks to discuss the Mythos threat. It turns out that the latest model can detect and autonomously exploit vulnerabilities in the operating systems that support most corporations and financial institutions. Unusually but sensibly, Anthropic has decided to not release Mythos to the public – but that doesn’t mean similar models won’t emerge elsewhere.

Monday mood: Just how “digital” is Bitcoin?

(what’s on my mind as we head into the week)

For most of this century, we’ve assumed the world was going digital. Finance, money, entertainment, even relationships => digital, “flat”, connected.

Those of us that rearchitected our careers and lives around this felt like we were ahead of the curve, creating the future, more forward-thinking than those stuck in analog ways.

We could argue about when the cracks in this worldview started to show. It could have been COVID, when we realized we didn’t want everything to be digital, remote, isolated. It could be the Russian invasion of Ukraine, giving most of us in the West our first bitter taste of kinetic war on our doorstep. I think the hostility of the previous Administration to a new emerging form of digital finance played a part, lifting the veil on the imperative and the cost of centralized control. The election of Donald Trump as President of the US, both times, can be seen as a big middle finger to the “connected” layer. And now, we have the mother of all supply shocks in energy and its derivatives headed our way.

We’re seeing it in markets as well. Indices of semiconductor manufacturers have significantly outperformed those of internet services over pretty much any recent time period. Meta went all-in on the metaverse but is now scaling back. The once-hot NFT market has been quiet for years. Mythos (see above) is driving home how software is vulnerable. Now, when I hear the term “tech company”, I think of robotics before platforms.

And those who have been insisting AI will bring “abundance” are sounding less confident today as datacentre buildout runs into the wall of energy and hardware scarcity.

So, if indeed we are moving into a rediscovered appreciation for “stuff”, where does that leave the long-term outlook for Bitcoin, which is undeniably and exclusively digital?

A caveat before I sketch out why Bitcoin both is and isn’t: this is not a well-thought-out thesis yet, this is just my off-the-cuff Monday musing where I riff on what I’m thinking about. Feedback and pushback are welcome.

With that out of the way, here goes:

Along comes Bitcoin, a new type of network that breaks the paradigm of centralized control and offers up a new type of asset that defies categorization.

But what if we started to look at Bitcoin the other way around? Less as provable scarcity on a digital network, and more as digital convenience layered onto a scarce asset?

These two approaches may sound exactly the same, but they’re not: the emphasis is different in each.

If I’m right and the zeitgeist is changing, “digital” will become less dominant as a narrative, more a powerful layer of convenience than a reason for being unto itself. Here is where Bitcoin can shine relative to other “digital-first” assets that exist because of their convenience and the networked service they provide. Not only is Bitcoin the only provably scarce asset with hard property rights and no centralized control that can move on digital networks. It’s also one of the very few digital assets that does not need permission to exist but that does anyway – by “digital asset”, I mean any asset that exists digitally, on any electronic network, not just in crypto.

Most digital assets were created to do something. Bitcoin just is. It exists in that limbo between physical and digital, bringing properties of each to the other.

And in a world moving towards appreciating scarcity and protection over convenience and speed, this will come to matter more.

Markets: a whiplash of a weekend

WEEKLY - Russian stablecoins, financial politics

Noelle Acheson — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:33:03 GMT

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves, ‘cos this timeline is just crazy…

You’re reading the free weekly Crypto is Macro Now, where I re-share a couple of the week’s premium posts as well as some non-crypto and non-macro links of interest.

💮 If you’re not a subscriber to the premium dailies, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! For the price of a weekly cup of coffee, you’ll get access to market commentary as well as adoption insight and industry trends. Plus, links and music recommendations ‘cos why not… 💮

Subscribe now

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨

As traditional finance and crypto converge, trusted data is the missing infrastructure layer. Allium provides this data foundation for teams like Visa, Stripe and Grayscale.

If you’re producing institutional crypto research or analytics, start with trusted data. Explore a live demo.

In this newsletter:

✨ Introducing Press Publish ✨
Russian stablecoins in Africa
Stablecoins and politics
Assorted links: conspiracy theories, reading lists, book clubs, loneliness policy, crypto bros and writing a bestseller.
Weekend: Glass blowing

Some of the topics discussed in this week’s premium dailies:

Monday, March 30

Coming up this week: jobs and inflation
Monday mood: the China question
Markets: incoherence
Macro: US consumer sentiment

Tuesday, March 31

Russia’s evolving crypto narrative
Markets: geopolitical swings
Macro: euro inflation and the coming crunch

Wednesday, April 1

Bitcoin and the quantum threat
Market: ingrained optimism
Macro: US jobs

Monday, April 6

Coming up this week: inflation and geopolitics
✨Introducing “Press Publish” ✨
🔦New section 🔦 Term of the day: Strait
Monday mood: Iran, stablecoins and the digital yuan
Markets: thick confusion
Macro: US jobs

Tuesday, April 7

Term of the day: decimate
Russian stablecoins in Africa
Markets: the talk
Macro: US services activity

Wednesday, April 8

Term of the day: naphtha
Markets: the relief
The geoeconomics of bitcoin-backed bonds

Thursday, April 9

Term of the day: Brent
Markets: now for the post-relief?
Macro: behind the inflation expectations
Toll payment in bitcoin

Friday, April 10

Terms of the day: narratives vs themes
Stablecoins and politics
Markets: hopium
Why Satoshi’s identity matters
Macro: US PCE inflation

✨ Press Publish with Christine Kim

So, I did it! On Friday I launched a Substack live series 🎥 – not on crypto nor macro (coming soon!), but on writing newsletters.

There’s no-one I’d rather have kicked this off with than my friend and former colleague Christine Kim, one of the leading experts on the Ethereum ecosystem, now also covering Bitcoin, and the author of the ACD After Hours and BTC Before Light newsletters, host of the Ready for Merge and the Meet the Developers podcasts, and more besides. (You can see her recent publications here.)

We talked about why she left a good job with a good salary to dive into the harsh and yet satisfying world of content production, what she would have done differently if she could go back in time, what she loves, what she finds frustrating, what advice she’d give anyone starting out in this field, and a whole lot more. We can all learn from Christine’s experience and courage.

✨NEXT UP: ✨

Russian stablecoins in Africa

Regular readers will know that I often write about the role of stablecoins in geopolitics. They don’t just represent a potential extension of the reach of the US dollar, further cementing its role as a global store-of-value and trading currency. They also facilitate the use of dollar alternatives, potentially weakening both the dollar’s international position and the power of the US and other western powers to punish uncooperative nations by cutting off their access to the dollar-dominated system.

One example I’ve cited a few times is Russia’s use of stablecoins in trade; its CBDC is due to launch later this year, but crypto assets including stablecoins have been legal for cross-border settlement since mid-2024. With most of Russia’s banks sanctioned, this has been a lifeline for many of its businesses.

Of course, Western powers have tried to stop this. Last year, the EU applied sanctions to one of the key local stablecoins powering Russian cross-border trade: A7A5, pegged to the rouble. At the time, I wrote that this was a futile move as the entities using the token weren’t going to care much about a few more sanctions. And anyway, a stablecoin is just a few lines of code, easy to copy and paste under a different name. (I’m simplifying, of course, but the point that they are not hard to replicate holds.)

Indeed, the sanctions don’t seem to have worked. A7A5 today is the 21st largest stablecoin in circulation by market cap and has considerably more market cap than the largest euro stablecoin EURC, according to data from DeFiLlama.

What’s more, its operations are expanding.

The Financial Times reported earlier this week that A7 – the Moscow-based business behind A7A5, owned by sanctioned Moldovan banker Ilan Shor and the sanctioned Russian state-owned lender Promsvyazbank (PSB) – was recruiting for operations in Africa. Specifically, it had posted a search for someone to build a business “from scratch” in Togo.

In case anyone thinks this is just a Russian fintech setting up satellite offices, last year the firm expanded to Nigeria and Zimbabwe. According to the Centre for Information Resilience, the new offices were officially opened by Russian Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov and Promsvyazbank Deputy Chairman Mikhail Dorofeev, and Russian media reported that the ceremonies were attended by the host countries’ finance ministers.

While a small country on the west coast of the continent, Togo has strategic significance for Russia. Last year, the two countries signed a military cooperation agreement, and Russia reportedly views Togo as an entry point for deeper West African engagement – it plans to open an embassy in the country this year.

But take a look at where Togo is on the map: right below the Sahel, a band of countries stretching across northern Africa, in which – via a series of coups and other patterns of domestic unrest – Russia has managed to gain a strong foothold in terms of military and commercial influence.

Also, Togo has a modern deep-water port which, obviously, most of the Sahel nations don’t. So, it’s not a stretch to see why Russia is interested in the country as a conduit for merchandise heading in both directions.

Much of this will need to be paid for. Given Russia’s banking restrictions, we can assume that it will continue to pressure trade partners to accommodate the use of rails the incumbent financial system can’t shut down.

See also:

Sanctions on a stablecoin (Oct 2025)
The dark side of crypto (June 2025)
Why the coup in Niger matters for crypto, by way of a mission statement (Aug 2023)

🌸 If you find this newsletter useful, would you mind sharing it with your friends and colleagues and nudging them to subscribe? I’d appreciate it! 🌸

Stablecoins and politics

Earlier this week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) published a study on the potential impact of allowing stablecoin issuers to offer yield on balances.

I confess I haven’t had a chance yet to read the full report, but going from the Executive Summary, it concludes that any cost to lending would be minimal (an impact of around 0.02%), and the cost to consumers from banning yield would be a considerable “net welfare cost” of $800 million.

In sum, the CEA dismisses claims that lending would suffer a meaningful hit, and argues that allowing stablecoin yield would be beneficial for the US economy, which indirectly would also benefit banks. This is contrary to claims from the banking industry that their ability to lend and therefore support the US economy is under threat.

The main takeaway here is how political this issue is. Of course, the CEA’s report is full of untested assumptions, as is the banking industry’s opposition. What’s interesting is the divide between the Administration, which sees benefit in limiting the influence of banks, and Congress, whose representatives are more swayed by arguments hitting local economies, and who often get donations from bankers for their political campaigns.

Of course, crypto enthusiasts pushing for the ability of stablecoin holders to earn a return are pointing to this report as vindication. It’s not. Predicting future impacts is not a science.

Rather, the report feels like messaging from the White House to the banking industry: we’re against you on this. Of course, anyone listening to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s breathless predictions of stablecoin growth and what that will do for both dollar hegemony and demand for US treasuries already knows this. But the banking industry has been acting as if it doesn’t.

To drive the point home even more forcefully, Bessent wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, published on Wednesday, in which he rails against the banking industry’s attempt to take financial innovation hostage.

Here’s a sample quote:

“The U.S. didn’t become the world’s financial center by hesitating in moments of technological change. It led by setting standards that others followed.”

So, US banks vs the Administration? This is not new – US political history is peppered with the tussle between centralized financial power and the outlook for the average American individual. It still astonishes many of us Europeans that it is now the Democratic Party fighting to perpetuate entrenched interests.

What is new is that this is not so much about breaking a monopoly and redistributing the opportunity, although there is obviously some of that. It’s also about how much power the US government should have relative to Wall Street.

Because what does stablecoin demand translate into? Demand for US Treasuries. More demand for US Treasuries brings down rates, stimulates the economy, and gives the Administration not just the political win, but also more spending power which translates into a greater influence on the US economy. No wonder the US Treasury Secretary is so enthusiastic about growth in stablecoin demand.

Back to the CEA report – of course it’s not conclusive, but I don’t mean to belittle its significance: it is a useful addition to the pro-innovation arguments, especially now that banking lobbies will have to work harder to justify their predictions if they want to debunk the CEA’s.

Personally, I don’t think the stablecoin rewards issue should hold up the CLARITY Act. I also don’t think idle stablecoin balances should be able to earn meaningful interest – there are other ways they can get yield, and greater demand for those opportunities would encourage further development of DeFi applications, tokenized money market funds and so on.

But I bristle at the banks thinking that they can play victim here and use underhand tactics to reinforce their extremely profitable moat.

Still, the most they can do is delay the inevitable monopoly-busting force of innovation. The Administration has levers it can pull, influence it can sway, and a powerful message to repeat and repeat and repeat: at stake is no less than American dominance of finance and technology.

See also:

Stablecoin rewards and bank deceit (March 2026)
Stablecoin yield compromise? (March 2026)

ASSORTED LINKS

Arthur Brooks tackles the thorny subject of why we are fascinated by conspiracy theories – it’s about our instinctive need for coherence in our lives, and when things don’t make sense, we’ll grasp at any reason. (Why Your Neighbor Became a Conspiracy Theorist. And Maybe You, Too, The Free Press – paywall with free trial)
Ted Gioia answers questions about his 52-week classics reading program, diving into the relevance of old texts, unearthing some modern gems, how the art of cinema tends to be left out of the culture discussions, and more. (How to Read the Great Books in 52 Weeks, The Honest Broker)
There have been signs building that reading books is becoming “fashionable” again. But reading as a social activity? That’s a new one for me, and I kinda love the idea. (People Are Paying $1,000 to Read Among Strangers, Bloomberg – paywall)
If loneliness is an increasingly serious social problem, then shouldn’t governments be doing more to combat it? Alex Mayyasi has some intriguing ideas about how they could do that, and dives into why so many arts and other social businesses are struggling in this hyper-productive age. (Why ‘Cost Disease’ Is the Secret Force Behind America’s Toxic Solitude, Derek Thompson)
As a woman in crypto, I’ve always hated the term “crypto bros”, although I get that it describes a certain blinkered enthusiasm born from a conviction that the idealistic are always right. So, I enjoyed Brady Dale’s dissection of the negative connotations of the term, and how it’s thankfully fading. (We need to talk about calling people “bros”, Front Stage Exit)
A podcast episode: Andy Weir – author of the books The Martian and Project Hail Mary – talks about how and why he writes, how the Project Hail Mary film (strong recommend) came about, and more. Refreshing. (Andy Weir on Writing the Hit Book Behind the Movie ‘Project Hail Mary’, The Book Review podcast)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

(in this section, I share stuff that has NOTHING to do with macro or crypto, ‘cos it’s the weekend and life is interesting)

One of my secret obsessions is glasswork, the act of creating glass sculptures and vessels. From a blob of nothing, a smooth and transparent fantasy can emerge, whose delicacy masks the brute force of strength and fire required to make it. And I’ve often told my family that, when I retire, I want to become a glassblower.

So, today – since I’m pretty sure we could all use a reminder of how not all beauty is ephemeral – I’m going to share a few videos which highlight the artistry and the glow of glass creations. Just breathtaking.

Press Publish with Noelle Acheson and Christine Kim

Noelle Acheson — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:13:55 GMT

Available for iOS and Android

A big thank you to all who showed up for my very first Substack Live! Nothing went terribly wrong, huge relief, and I had a fantastic time chatting to my good friend Christine Kim about how she produces her prolific work, lessons learned, advice she’d give people starting out, and a lot more. You can see more of her work on her Substack page here.