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Nothing unites Crypto Twitter more than some cringe content. 

A now-deleted Solana ad sparked a come-together moment for the timeline yesterday as folks criticized the writing, and the mixed messaging and debated whether or not a blockchain foundation should even run an ad so politically focused. 

I’ll put my personal beef with the writing to the side here. Admittedly, it reminds me of a time when a journalism professor made me read bad articles and books for a semester straight so that I’d learn what not to do. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that it at least seemed to create interesting debates on the timeline.

Whether or not you agree with the content of the ad, here’s my question: Should blockchain foundations bother paying for ads?

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s lost a little momentum, slipping to $82,000 over the past day. Ethereum’s down around the same amount — about 1% — to $1,890. 

• Solana’s down roughly 4% to $123. 

• DeFi total value locked sits at $90 billion, a slight uptick in the past 24 hours though it’s still down 16% over the past week per Blockworks Research data.

🙏 Converging paths

Securitize and Ethena have announced Converge, an EVM blockchain focused on supporting and advancing both DeFi and tokenized assets. 

Here’s my TLDR: Converge wants to build products and apps with partners catered to institutional investors, giving them access to DeFi. Securitize will issue both future and existing tokenized assets on the blockchain. 

Partners include Maple, Morpho, Pendle, Aave Labs’ Horizon, and then you have custodial support from the likes of Copper, Fireblocks and Komainu. 

The two plan to launch Converge within the next three months, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo told me, and they’ll start sending out updates on it every two weeks up until launch. The testnet isn’t live yet, but the two have built some prototypes, he added. 

So, no time is being wasted — probably for the best given the momentum behind institutional adoption at this stage.

I asked Domingo when the two started working on the vision for Converge and he told me that the Ethena team came to Securitize during the time period when it was raising $100 million for its own chain.

“They basically approached us to see whether we want to be part of it because they felt very strongly that the power of this will be not just that institutional DeFi … but that we can bring our RWA’s,” Domingo explained. 

Ethena’s Guy Young said that the blockchain fills a “clear gap in the market” as the settlement layer. 

But the announcement wasn’t without some criticism — which should come as no surprise in crypto. 

When I brought up the criticism from David Hoffman, Domingo clarified that Converge isn’t a private blockchain, which is also why the two aren’t looking to just build a database. 

However, if it were a private blockchain, Domingo said a database would make complete sense. 

“Look, the world is multichain. There are going to be many chains. They’re all going to be connected. We have people like Wormhole that facilitate the crosschain connectivity,” he said. “I don’t think we can rely on one chain…Ethereum is great, and we support Ethereum and our largest assets are on [there]. But, at the same time, it has a lot of problems in terms of flexibility.”

“You have to introduce new features there, as we know, extremely slow. You also have the cost of transaction, the time of finality, etc. So I think there's a space for alternatives,” Domingo added.

Not to mention, institutions love exposure. Domingo said they plan to continue supporting other chains as well. 

At the end of the day, Domingo noted, DeFi “has been stuck.” He argued that it hasn’t really grown since DeFi summer in 2021, and it’s acting as a potential barrier for a full-on bull market (one of a few if you ask me). 

“There’s clearly a problem with DeFi growth unless there’s institutional adoption,” Domingo believes. 

It’s hard to make a judgment on a press release, so this is a scenario where I, yet again, will have to wait and see how it plays out.

If Converge can take down the DeFi barrier — and there’s real institutional adoption taking place — then I agree: it seems pretty bullish.

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• The Winklevoss-backed Gemini hired a new CFO as it reportedly mulls going public. 

• The “Trump-inspired” World Liberty Financial raised $550 million in token sales.

• Robinhood unveiled a prediction market hub available through Kalshi.

😎 The next big thing

Speaking of tokenization, Blockworks Research analyst Carlos Gonzalez Campo has penned a new report on the subject. 

“We anticipate the rapid development of purpose-built infrastructure,” Gonzalez Campo wrote. 

And wouldn’t you know it, we’re already seeing it in Ondo Chain and Converge. Both are “designed to align with regulatory requirements while leveraging the efficiencies and transparency of open blockchain networks.”

“In the coming months, we see the greatest opportunities in the tokenization of illiquid markets, particularly private equity. However, the successful integration of offchain assets into blockchain ecosystems relies heavily on clear and consistent regulatory frameworks,” he continued.

Gonzalez Campo makes the case that tokenizing private equity makes more sense than public stocks due to the high entry barriers and illiquidity that plagues private markets. 

“Unlike public stocks, which are already easily traded on traditional brokerage platforms and apps like Robinhood, tokenized private equity allows investors to access fractional ownership in high-growth private companies while adding efficiency to valuation dislocations,” he wrote.

Tokenized stocks, however, do have a bit of interest as seen by the chart below. 

Right now, tokenized versions of Coinbase, Nvidia and the iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF dominate the available tokenized public stocks. 

But, “with the right regulatory guidance in the US, we expect that shares of private companies like SpaceX and Open AI will be tokenized over the course of the next four years,” the note said. 

Throughout my career, the idea of making these highly exclusive private markets more available to the public has been teased but not really truly acted on — at least in a way where folks really can get a piece of whatever private pie they want. 

It’s certainly taken longer than I thought it would after Robinhood changed the game for stock trading years ago. But it’s exciting to see a potential timeline laid out.

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On our minds: tk