Imagine holding gold as a token onchain. Two problems emerge.

• First, liquidity is shallow when you want to sell. Large sales onchain markets create significant slippage.

• Second, cashing out takes days. The issuer needs time to liquidate physical gold and convert it to dollars. These are the chronic limitations of traditional RWA tokenization.

Tenbin Labs approaches this problem by asking: "Why rely solely on onchain liquidity?" The core idea is simple. Instead of holding physical assets directly, synthesize price exposure through stablecoin collateral + CME futures hedging.

Consider issuing tokenized gold (tGLD). When a user deposits $1,000, you need to provide $1,000 worth of gold exposure. The traditional approach requires actually buying and storing gold, which creates liquidity problems. Gold spot markets aren't open 24/7, and large sales significantly impact prices. Tenbin's solution is different. Instead of buying physical gold, they keep stablecoin collateral onchain and go long CME gold futures.

What effect does this create?

When Tenbin issues tGLD, it assumes the obligation to "pay users whatever gold appreciates by." This obligation itself represents short gold exposure from Tenbin's perspective (if gold rises, Tenbin loses). To offset this, they take a long position in gold futures. Of the $1,000 collateral, $100 (10%) is deposited as margin at CME, and they go long $1,000 worth of gold futures. If gold rises, the futures long profits, and this pays users. If gold falls, the futures lose, but users also receive less, so it offsets. tGLD issuance obligation (short exposure) + futures long = delta neutral. This is the principle of hedging. Why CME? Daily metals futures volume reaches $454 billion, FX at $86 billion. This deep liquidity is impossible to achieve onchain.

So where does yield come from?

If you're delta neutral, you can't profit from price movements. There are two sources. First, onchain DeFi yield. Over 75% of collateral remains onchain, and deploying these stablecoins in low-risk yield strategies like Aave or Morpho can generate 4-6% annually. Second, futures basis yield. The difference between futures and spot prices is called basis, and as this difference converges to zero at expiration, it generates either yield or cost.

Let's look at gold (tGLD) as a concrete example.

Contango is when futures prices exceed spot prices, and gold is a typical case. Storing gold costs money (insurance, warehousing), so since buying futures avoids these storage costs, the market adds a premium. If spot is $4,000 per ounce and 3-month futures are $4,040 (basis +$40), the annualized financing cost is (40 × 4) ÷ 4,000 = approximately 4%. To issue gold tokens, Tenbin must go long futures, but in contango, longs lose over time. Buying futures at $4,040 and settling at $4,000 at expiration means a $40 loss. This cost must be offset by onchain yield. If off-chain margin is 10%, 90% remains onchain, and to offset 4% cost, onchain yield needs to be at least 4% ÷ 0.90 = 4.44%.

Now consider the Brazilian real (tBRL).

Backwardation is when futures prices are below spot, typical for high-interest currencies. Brazil's benchmark rate is about 15%, while the US is 3.5%. Holding BRL earns this interest differential, but dollar-based investors holding BRL spot face exchange rate risk. The futures market reflects this interest differential by trading BRL futures below spot. If spot is 1 BRL = 0.20 USD and 3-month futures are 1 BRL = 0.195 USD (basis -0.005), annualized yield is (0.005 × 4) ÷ 0.20 = approximately 10%. When Tenbin issues BRL tokens and goes long futures, buying at 0.195 and settling at 0.20 generates 10% annualized return. Opposite to contango, hedging itself becomes a yield source. Adding onchain DeFi yield, if 90% of collateral generates 5% annually, total yield becomes (0.90 × 5%) + 10% = 14.5%. This "captures" BRL's high interest rates without holding physical currency.

Ultimately, Tenbin token yield structures vary based on the asset's futures curve state. Contango assets (gold, most commodities) incur hedging costs that onchain yield must offset for positive returns. Backwardation assets (high-interest currencies) turn hedging itself into yield, combining with onchain returns. Users need to understand this difference.

What infrastructure is needed if AI agents make payments? Simon Taylor drew a map answering this question in Fintech Brainfood. The key insight: "Multiple protocols emerging isn't redundancy—they solve different problems at different layers."

Taylor decomposes this problem into six layers.

1. Agent Communication Layer: How do agents talk to each other? MCP (Model Context Protocol), created by Anthropic, standardizes how agents communicate with external systems. Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) handles security and coordination when multiple agents collaborate in enterprise environments.

2. Trust Layer: Can we trust this agent? From a merchant's perspective, after years of blocking bots, requests now arrive claiming "I'm a legitimate agent." ERC-8004 proposes an onchain registry for agent identity, reputation, and MCP endpoints. Visa TAP (Trusted Agent Protocol) issues signatures proving Visa has verified the agent. Why does this matter? A single compromised agent credential could execute thousands of fraudulent transactions per minute. Human fraud can be caught after the fact, but machine-speed fraud must be prevented in advance.

3. Mandate Layer: Does this agent have payment authorization? Even if an agent is trustworthy, whether it has payment authority is a separate issue. Google's AP2 (Agent to Pay) introduces the "mandate" concept, subdivided into Cart mandate (what can the agent buy?), Intent mandate (what did the user approve?), and Payment mandate (which card to use?). Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) and Mastercard Agent Pay (MAP) solve this at the card network level, with rollout planned for H2 2026.

4. Transaction Flow Layer: Discovery, negotiation, checkout. This is the most competitive space. ACP, created by OpenAI and Stripe, is a standard dictating "structure carts like this, generate payment tokens like this," already live in ChatGPT with Walmart, Etsy, and Instacart. UCP, created by Google and Shopify, takes a different approach—merchants publish information for agents, who then discover and negotiate.

5. Authentication Layer: Security and fraud prevention. This includes existing card payment systems like 3D Secure and chargebacks, though how to apply them to agent payments is still being defined.

6. Payment Rails: Actual settlement. Card networks, ACH, wire, or stablecoins. The rails themselves aren't new, but the logic for agents to choose which rail and when needs to be built.

Additionally noteworthy is Google's vertical integration. A2A (communication) → AP2 (authority delegation) → UCP (commerce) forms one coherent stack.

Google dominates the search market and controls the answer to "where can I buy X?" If merchants must support UCP to appear in Gemini shopping results, adoption becomes mandatory, not optional. Taylor predicts: "Google has created internet standards before and will do it again." Of course, OpenAI's ACP being deployed first can't be ignored. ChatGPT shopping is already working, and the winner of the standards war remains undecided.

With Kyle Samani's departure, Multicoin Capital published a long-overdue investment thesis update. It's the first since their 2019 Crypto Mega Theses, roughly seven years ago, and lays out eight investment themes. The full report is dense, so here are the three themes that resonated the most.

The first is Fintech 4.0.

The core claim is that stablecoins and blockchains provide fundamentally new financial rails for the first time in half a century, enabling a wave of specialized fintechs. Historically, early fintechs started by focusing on specific segments. SoFi did student loan refinancing, Chime offered early paycheck access, Greenlight provided teen debit cards, and Brex served founders who couldn't get traditional business credit. But the focus didn't last. Revenue caps on interchange, rising compliance costs, and dependence on legacy banking systems forced these companies to expand beyond their original markets. Unit economics simply wouldn't allow them to stay niche.

Multicoin argues that blockchain rails change this equation. With stablecoins, there's no need for sponsor banks, card networks, reconciliation teams, or dispute operations. Frontends can retain more margin, and unit economics can work even while serving narrow markets. The projection: thousands of hyperlocal fintechs will emerge, from neobanks for migrant workers in specific countries, to trading apps for crypto degens, payroll tools for digital nomads, and remittance apps dedicated to a single corridor.

The theory is compelling. But whether unit costs actually drop that much remains an open question. Sponsor bank and card network costs disappear, sure, but operations and KYC costs persist. Licensing requirements vary by jurisdiction, and customer support infrastructure is still necessary. Ultimately, this claim can only be validated by comparing actual unit economics data from teams that have built and operated stablecoin-native fintechs.

The second is Credit Vaults (CVs).

A CV is a pool of capital that anyone with a wallet can deposit into, while an operator (e.g., Gauntlet, Steakhouse Financial, MEV Capital) manages deployment according to pre-determined code parameters. So far, CVs have mostly been used for crypto-internal activities like market making, lending against crypto collateral, or earning leveraged DeFi yield.

What Multicoin finds compelling is the structural innovation. CVs separate roles that are traditionally bundled in private credit: liquidity providers own the assets, operators decide deployment strategy, and risk management is enforced automatically by smart contracts. No manual judgment or after-the-fact cleanup required. Why does this matter? The problem in lending today is that a well-capitalized lender in the US has no way of lending to a startup in Southeast Asia. There's no discovery process, no practical way to move the money, and no efficient mechanism for accountability and recourse.

CVs aim to solve this by having local operators source debt opportunities on the ground while drawing from a global capital pool. Consider an Indian software services company earning steady EUR revenue from European clients, yet facing high borrowing costs domestically. A CV operator can underwrite the business, secure funding from global lenders, and use cryptographic tools like zkTLS to verify accounts receivable and fund flows. Energy financing (Daylight financing solar panels) and creator financing (CreatorFi lending against YouTubers' future earnings) work within the same framework.

The third is Entertainment Finance.

Multicoin diagnoses a bifurcation of finance into necessity-driven finance and entertainment-driven finance. Short-form video replaces long-form, swipe dating replaces relationship building, zero-day options replace 401(k)s. The preference for immediacy maps directly onto finance. Declining housing affordability accelerates this trend. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, the share who believe the American Dream is still alive collapsed from 56% in 2010 to 21% in 2024. When the conventional path is blocked, people choose to roll the dice.

There are diverse views on entertainment finance. Some argue it's socially negative-EV. Others see it as individual freedom. Multicoin's stance is unambiguous: "This is a freight train we have no interest in standing in front of." The speculation and gambling market will keep growing because people enjoy games, risk-taking, and the chance to win big. What can change is how extractive these games are. In traditional gambling, casinos have a built-in house edge, sportsbooks charge high fees, and CFD brokers internalize B-Book trades. The hold rate on legal US sports betting climbed steadily from 6.7% in 2018 to 9.9% in 2025. On blockchains, P2P trading, transparent pricing, lower fees, and rules set in code are all possible. Products like Novig and Triumph point in this direction. The argument is that crypto isn't creating entertainment finance. It's serving already-existing demand more fairly and cheaply.

Imagine holding gold as a token onchain. Two problems emerge.

• First, liquidity is shallow when you want to sell. Large sales onchain markets create significant slippage.

• Second, cashing out takes days. The issuer needs time to liquidate physical gold and convert it to dollars. These are the chronic limitations of traditional RWA tokenization.

Tenbin Labs approaches this problem by asking: "Why rely solely on onchain liquidity?" The core idea is simple. Instead of holding physical assets directly, synthesize price exposure through stablecoin collateral + CME futures hedging.

Consider issuing tokenized gold (tGLD). When a user deposits $1,000, you need to provide $1,000 worth of gold exposure. The traditional approach requires actually buying and storing gold, which creates liquidity problems. Gold spot markets aren't open 24/7, and large sales significantly impact prices. Tenbin's solution is different. Instead of buying physical gold, they keep stablecoin collateral onchain and go long CME gold futures.

What effect does this create?

When Tenbin issues tGLD, it assumes the obligation to "pay users whatever gold appreciates by." This obligation itself represents short gold exposure from Tenbin's perspective (if gold rises, Tenbin loses). To offset this, they take a long position in gold futures. Of the $1,000 collateral, $100 (10%) is deposited as margin at CME, and they go long $1,000 worth of gold futures. If gold rises, the futures long profits, and this pays users. If gold falls, the futures lose, but users also receive less, so it offsets. tGLD issuance obligation (short exposure) + futures long = delta neutral. This is the principle of hedging. Why CME? Daily metals futures volume reaches $454 billion, FX at $86 billion. This deep liquidity is impossible to achieve onchain.

So where does yield come from?

If you're delta neutral, you can't profit from price movements. There are two sources. First, onchain DeFi yield. Over 75% of collateral remains onchain, and deploying these stablecoins in low-risk yield strategies like Aave or Morpho can generate 4-6% annually. Second, futures basis yield. The difference between futures and spot prices is called basis, and as this difference converges to zero at expiration, it generates either yield or cost.

Let's look at gold (tGLD) as a concrete example.

Contango is when futures prices exceed spot prices, and gold is a typical case. Storing gold costs money (insurance, warehousing), so since buying futures avoids these storage costs, the market adds a premium. If spot is $4,000 per ounce and 3-month futures are $4,040 (basis +$40), the annualized financing cost is (40 × 4) ÷ 4,000 = approximately 4%. To issue gold tokens, Tenbin must go long futures, but in contango, longs lose over time. Buying futures at $4,040 and settling at $4,000 at expiration means a $40 loss. This cost must be offset by onchain yield. If off-chain margin is 10%, 90% remains onchain, and to offset 4% cost, onchain yield needs to be at least 4% ÷ 0.90 = 4.44%.

Now consider the Brazilian real (tBRL).

Backwardation is when futures prices are below spot, typical for high-interest currencies. Brazil's benchmark rate is about 15%, while the US is 3.5%. Holding BRL earns this interest differential, but dollar-based investors holding BRL spot face exchange rate risk. The futures market reflects this interest differential by trading BRL futures below spot. If spot is 1 BRL = 0.20 USD and 3-month futures are 1 BRL = 0.195 USD (basis -0.005), annualized yield is (0.005 × 4) ÷ 0.20 = approximately 10%. When Tenbin issues BRL tokens and goes long futures, buying at 0.195 and settling at 0.20 generates 10% annualized return. Opposite to contango, hedging itself becomes a yield source. Adding onchain DeFi yield, if 90% of collateral generates 5% annually, total yield becomes (0.90 × 5%) + 10% = 14.5%. This "captures" BRL's high interest rates without holding physical currency.

Ultimately, Tenbin token yield structures vary based on the asset's futures curve state. Contango assets (gold, most commodities) incur hedging costs that onchain yield must offset for positive returns. Backwardation assets (high-interest currencies) turn hedging itself into yield, combining with onchain returns. Users need to understand this difference.

What infrastructure is needed if AI agents make payments? Simon Taylor drew a map answering this question in Fintech Brainfood. The key insight: "Multiple protocols emerging isn't redundancy—they solve different problems at different layers."

Taylor decomposes this problem into six layers.

1. Agent Communication Layer: How do agents talk to each other? MCP (Model Context Protocol), created by Anthropic, standardizes how agents communicate with external systems. Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) handles security and coordination when multiple agents collaborate in enterprise environments.

2. Trust Layer: Can we trust this agent? From a merchant's perspective, after years of blocking bots, requests now arrive claiming "I'm a legitimate agent." ERC-8004 proposes an onchain registry for agent identity, reputation, and MCP endpoints. Visa TAP (Trusted Agent Protocol) issues signatures proving Visa has verified the agent. Why does this matter? A single compromised agent credential could execute thousands of fraudulent transactions per minute. Human fraud can be caught after the fact, but machine-speed fraud must be prevented in advance.

3. Mandate Layer: Does this agent have payment authorization? Even if an agent is trustworthy, whether it has payment authority is a separate issue. Google's AP2 (Agent to Pay) introduces the "mandate" concept, subdivided into Cart mandate (what can the agent buy?), Intent mandate (what did the user approve?), and Payment mandate (which card to use?). Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) and Mastercard Agent Pay (MAP) solve this at the card network level, with rollout planned for H2 2026.

4. Transaction Flow Layer: Discovery, negotiation, checkout. This is the most competitive space. ACP, created by OpenAI and Stripe, is a standard dictating "structure carts like this, generate payment tokens like this," already live in ChatGPT with Walmart, Etsy, and Instacart. UCP, created by Google and Shopify, takes a different approach—merchants publish information for agents, who then discover and negotiate.

5. Authentication Layer: Security and fraud prevention. This includes existing card payment systems like 3D Secure and chargebacks, though how to apply them to agent payments is still being defined.

6. Payment Rails: Actual settlement. Card networks, ACH, wire, or stablecoins. The rails themselves aren't new, but the logic for agents to choose which rail and when needs to be built.

Additionally noteworthy is Google's vertical integration. A2A (communication) → AP2 (authority delegation) → UCP (commerce) forms one coherent stack.

Google dominates the search market and controls the answer to "where can I buy X?" If merchants must support UCP to appear in Gemini shopping results, adoption becomes mandatory, not optional. Taylor predicts: "Google has created internet standards before and will do it again." Of course, OpenAI's ACP being deployed first can't be ignored. ChatGPT shopping is already working, and the winner of the standards war remains undecided.

With Kyle Samani's departure, Multicoin Capital published a long-overdue investment thesis update. It's the first since their 2019 Crypto Mega Theses, roughly seven years ago, and lays out eight investment themes. The full report is dense, so here are the three themes that resonated the most.

The first is Fintech 4.0.

The core claim is that stablecoins and blockchains provide fundamentally new financial rails for the first time in half a century, enabling a wave of specialized fintechs. Historically, early fintechs started by focusing on specific segments. SoFi did student loan refinancing, Chime offered early paycheck access, Greenlight provided teen debit cards, and Brex served founders who couldn't get traditional business credit. But the focus didn't last. Revenue caps on interchange, rising compliance costs, and dependence on legacy banking systems forced these companies to expand beyond their original markets. Unit economics simply wouldn't allow them to stay niche.

Multicoin argues that blockchain rails change this equation. With stablecoins, there's no need for sponsor banks, card networks, reconciliation teams, or dispute operations. Frontends can retain more margin, and unit economics can work even while serving narrow markets. The projection: thousands of hyperlocal fintechs will emerge, from neobanks for migrant workers in specific countries, to trading apps for crypto degens, payroll tools for digital nomads, and remittance apps dedicated to a single corridor.

The theory is compelling. But whether unit costs actually drop that much remains an open question. Sponsor bank and card network costs disappear, sure, but operations and KYC costs persist. Licensing requirements vary by jurisdiction, and customer support infrastructure is still necessary. Ultimately, this claim can only be validated by comparing actual unit economics data from teams that have built and operated stablecoin-native fintechs.

The second is Credit Vaults (CVs).

A CV is a pool of capital that anyone with a wallet can deposit into, while an operator (e.g., Gauntlet, Steakhouse Financial, MEV Capital) manages deployment according to pre-determined code parameters. So far, CVs have mostly been used for crypto-internal activities like market making, lending against crypto collateral, or earning leveraged DeFi yield.

What Multicoin finds compelling is the structural innovation. CVs separate roles that are traditionally bundled in private credit: liquidity providers own the assets, operators decide deployment strategy, and risk management is enforced automatically by smart contracts. No manual judgment or after-the-fact cleanup required. Why does this matter? The problem in lending today is that a well-capitalized lender in the US has no way of lending to a startup in Southeast Asia. There's no discovery process, no practical way to move the money, and no efficient mechanism for accountability and recourse.

CVs aim to solve this by having local operators source debt opportunities on the ground while drawing from a global capital pool. Consider an Indian software services company earning steady EUR revenue from European clients, yet facing high borrowing costs domestically. A CV operator can underwrite the business, secure funding from global lenders, and use cryptographic tools like zkTLS to verify accounts receivable and fund flows. Energy financing (Daylight financing solar panels) and creator financing (CreatorFi lending against YouTubers' future earnings) work within the same framework.

The third is Entertainment Finance.

Multicoin diagnoses a bifurcation of finance into necessity-driven finance and entertainment-driven finance. Short-form video replaces long-form, swipe dating replaces relationship building, zero-day options replace 401(k)s. The preference for immediacy maps directly onto finance. Declining housing affordability accelerates this trend. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, the share who believe the American Dream is still alive collapsed from 56% in 2010 to 21% in 2024. When the conventional path is blocked, people choose to roll the dice.

There are diverse views on entertainment finance. Some argue it's socially negative-EV. Others see it as individual freedom. Multicoin's stance is unambiguous: "This is a freight train we have no interest in standing in front of." The speculation and gambling market will keep growing because people enjoy games, risk-taking, and the chance to win big. What can change is how extractive these games are. In traditional gambling, casinos have a built-in house edge, sportsbooks charge high fees, and CFD brokers internalize B-Book trades. The hold rate on legal US sports betting climbed steadily from 6.7% in 2018 to 9.9% in 2025. On blockchains, P2P trading, transparent pricing, lower fees, and rules set in code are all possible. Products like Novig and Triumph point in this direction. The argument is that crypto isn't creating entertainment finance. It's serving already-existing demand more fairly and cheaply.