Financial activity moves onchain.
Payments, trading and settlement keep moving onto public blockchains, and the businesses that route that activity earn a fee on each step.
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The argument
Why this idea. Why these businesses.
This basket holds three of those businesses: the exchange large amounts pass through, the issuer of the dollar they settle in, and the brokerage that brings retail money in. Each earns in a different way, so the claim can be right through any one of them without needing all three to work.
Inside the basket
- 40%
Coinbase Global
Coinbase earns a fee when someone trades, and it holds assets for institutions that will not custody their own. If more financial activity moves onchain, a regulated exchange is one of the few places large amounts of it can pass through.
The tradeoff. Revenue still follows retail trading volume, which rises and falls with prices. A quiet year is a bad year for this holding even if the claim is correct.
About this tokenized stock
Underlying: COIN. Issuer: Backed Finance. Backed Finance issues these tokens. The issuer can move tokens out of any wallet (permanent delegate) and can freeze all transfers (pausable). Balances rebase for dividends and splits, so your share count can change without a trade.
Issuer terms (opens in a new tab) - 30%
Circle Internet Group
Circle issues USDC, the dollar most onchain activity settles in. Payments and trades that move onchain have to settle in something, and the issuer earns on the reserves behind every unit in circulation.
The tradeoff. Circle's income depends heavily on interest earned on those reserves. If rates fall, that income falls with them, even while the amount of USDC in circulation grows.
About this tokenized stock
Underlying: CRCL. Issuer: Backed Finance. Backed Finance issues these tokens. The issuer can move tokens out of any wallet (permanent delegate) and can freeze all transfers (pausable). Balances rebase for dividends and splits, so your share count can change without a trade.
Issuer terms (opens in a new tab) - 30%
Robinhood Markets
Robinhood puts crypto next to stocks in one retail account. It captures the customer who moves money onchain without ever calling themselves a crypto user.
The tradeoff. Crypto is one revenue line among several. Equities and options still drive much of the business, so part of this holding is a bet on retail trading in general rather than on the claim.
About this tokenized stock
Underlying: HOOD. Issuer: Backed Finance. Backed Finance issues these tokens. The issuer can move tokens out of any wallet (permanent delegate) and can freeze all transfers (pausable). Balances rebase for dividends and splits, so your share count can change without a trade.
Issuer terms (opens in a new tab)
Why these weights. Coinbase carries the most direct exposure to the claim, so it takes the largest share. The other two are equal. This is a judgement, not the output of an optimiser.
The strongest case against
Activity can move onchain without these three capturing it. Fees on public networks fall over time, and the routing layer is easier to replace than the companies built on top of it. Banks are building their own rails, and a bank that settles its own payments onchain pays none of these three. An onchain future can arrive and route around every listed intermediary — the claim right, the basket wrong.
What would change the thesis?
Two consecutive quarters where onchain settlement volume rises while the transaction revenue of these three falls. That would mean the activity is real and the fee is being earned somewhere we do not hold.
Read the evidence. Make up your mind.
Sources supporting the idea, including the ones that challenge it.
- Circle Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (opens in a new tab)
Circle Internet Group, 8-K exhibit via SEC EDGAR
Settlement volume is growing far faster than the money sitting still: onchain transaction volume of $14.8 trillion grew 151% year-over-year, while USDC in circulation grew 19%. The claim is about activity moving, not about balances.
- Coinbase Second Quarter 2026 Shareholder Letter (opens in a new tab)
Coinbase Global, 8-K exhibit via SEC EDGAR
Stablecoin balances are now a revenue line that does not depend on trading: $292M of stablecoin revenue against an all-time-high $20B of average USDC held in Coinbase products.
- GENIUS Act, Public Law 119-27 (opens in a new tab)
U.S. Government Publishing Office
A statutory federal framework for payment stablecoins now exists. Regulated institutions needed that before they could route meaningful volume, so it is the precondition the rest of the thesis sits on. Older than the other sources, and included for that reason.
- Robinhood Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (opens in a new tab)
Robinhood Markets, 8-K exhibit via SEC EDGAR
Evidence against the basket from inside it. Robinhood's cryptocurrencies revenue was $100 million, down 38% year-over-year, in the same quarter onchain volume rose sharply. Activity moving onchain does not automatically reach these companies.
- Anchoring trust in money: innovation beyond stablecoins (opens in a new tab)
Bank for International Settlements, Annual Economic Report 2026
The structural case against. The BIS argues stablecoins cannot currently ensure exchange at par across issuers and chains under all conditions, which is a problem for anything built on them as settlement money.
Updates and version history
An update appends dated evidence to this argument. A new version changes the argument or the allocation itself. Neither one touches a position you already hold.
No updates since publication. When the author adds one, it appears here with its date and its sources — it never changes what is written above.
- Version 1
61b9e0853bCurrent
Written by the Thesis team. The team holds no position in these companies or their tokenized shares, and is paid nothing by any of them.
Tracking begins at publication. This thesis has no established performance history. Tokenized stocks carry issuer and market risk.