The Wire PM — July 20, 2026

The Wire PM — July 20, 2026

Tokenized stocks are now perps margin Lighter, the zero-knowledge perpetuals exchange on Robinhood Chain, made Robinhood Stock Tokens eligible as trading collateral. Until now the chain ran on a single collateral asset, USDG, which had served as both margin and quote unit since mainnet launched on July 1. The tokens are ERC-20 debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, each with a live Chainlink feed so contracts can read prices on-chain. They give economic exposure to US shares and ETFs without any legal or beneficial claim on them. Lighter had said gold, bitcoin and stocks were the Q3 collateral roadmap, so this is the first item shipping. The limit is jurisdictional: the tokens are unregistered under US securities law, which puts Robinhood's roughly 24 million US-funded accounts outside the product. Lighter went live in October 2025, raised $68 million at about a $1.5 billion valuation last November, and splits revenue with Robinhood Chain 50-50. Source: The Defiant.

Cardano hard-forked without Input Output in the room The Van Rossem upgrade activated today, the first major Cardano protocol change ratified entirely through on-chain governance rather than by the founding development company. Three bodies had to sign off: delegated representatives approved at 77.63% against a 60% threshold, stake pool operators at 52.7% against a 51% threshold, and the constitutional oversight committee cleared it. The upgrade itself sets up better scalability and lower fees, but the mechanism is the more durable result. Every prior Cardano fork was Input Output's call. This one was not. The fork carries the name of Max van Rossem, a Dutch contributor who died in October 2025 and who helped design the governance system that just approved it. Source: Decrypt.

Bernstein sees prediction markets outgrowing crypto at Robinhood The bank raised its Robinhood price target to $160, naming prediction markets, Rothera and Robinhood Chain as the revenue drivers, and expects prediction markets to pass crypto as a contributor. The timing is worth noting: the same day, the perps venue on Robinhood Chain widened its collateral base. The equities, prediction and on-chain legs are being built as one stack, not three products. Source: The Block.

Nigeria coordinates rather than rebuilds President Bola Tinubu signed an executive order on Friday creating a virtual asset council chaired by senior financial regulators, and directing the tax authority to update digital asset policy. Presidential adviser Bayo Onanuga was specific that it creates no new regulator and shifts no powers between agencies, with registration determined by activity and asset type. Scale explains the interest: per an IMF report in June, Nigeria accounted for roughly 60% of stablecoin inflows across sub-Saharan Africa since 2019, and about $59 billion in crypto inflows between July 2023 and June 2024. Source: Cointelegraph.

NEAR's Polosukhin: code review is losing to AI attackers Illia Polosukhin argued that AI-assisted hacking has moved faster than traditional code review can keep up with, and that formal verification needs to become standard practice for on-chain code instead of a specialist extra. The argument arrives in a week that already produced a $1.65 million flash loan exploit at Allbridge, which paused its core bridge in response. Source: The Block.

Numbers (Updated)

• BTC: $65,142 (+1.18%)
• SOL: $77.55 (+2.51%)
• ETH: $1,894 (+1.95%)
• Solana DeFi TVL: $4.93B
• Top USDC yield (Solana, deep liquidity): Jupiter Lend at 4.33% on $424M

Prices via CoinGecko, TVL and yields via DeFiLlama. Not financial advice.

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