Tokenization: Building frustration
Plus: markets, US consumption, helium and more
“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.
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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.
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✨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.
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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.
