Financial Architects: The Deals Wiring the Next Operating Layer

Key deals of January 12 - January 16, 2026

Polygon Labs: Stablecoins Want a Real Payments Stack

Polygon Labs is leaning into stablecoins as payments infrastructure. The company is acquiring Coinme and Sequence for over $250M to capture growing demand for dollar-pegged digital payments and settlement. 

​​With regulatory clarity improving after the passage of the Genius Act, stablecoins, digital tokens (pegged to the U.S. dollar) are increasingly being explored as a tool for payments and settlements. 

Coinme brings fiat-to-crypto rails and regulatory muscle; Sequence adds the layer that makes moving value across blockchains usable at scale. 

Partnering where it makes sense matters more than being first to issue the card.

Andreessen Horowitz: Venture Capital at National Scale

Andreessen Horowitz has raised over $15B across multiple new funds, accounting for roughly 18% of all venture capital dollars allocated in the U.S. in 2025. The capital is spread across American Dynamism ($1.176B), Apps ($1.7B), Bio + Health ($700M), Infrastructure ($1.7B), Growth ($6.75B), and other venture strategies ($3B), reflecting continued focus on AI, crypto, and applied technology across major sectors.

The firm framed the raise around its long-stated mission of expanding access to opportunity through technological progress, with an emphasis on maintaining U.S. leadership in critical technologies. a16z said it plans to invest in AI and crypto as foundational architectures and to apply them across areas such as health, biology, defense, education.

LSEG’s DiSH: Real Cash Goes On-Chain

LSEG (The London Stock Exchange Group) is pushing post-trade infrastructure into real time with the launch of Digital Settlement House, a blockchain-based platform designed to settle cash, securities and digital assets 24/7 across currencies and networks. At the center is DiSH Cash: tokenized commercial bank deposits recorded on a shared ledger, backed by actual bank money. The system supports payment-versus-payment and delivery-versus-payment in real time, reducing settlement lag, counterparty risk, and trapped liquidity. 

Built inside LSEG’s Post Trade Solutions unit, DiSH can operate on-chain, off-chain, or as a bridge between both, signaling a serious attempt to modernize settlement without stepping outside the existing banking system.

Bankinter & Bit2Me: Banks Don’t Build, They Plug In

Bankinter is taking a stake in Bit2Me, joining the Spanish crypto firm’s €30M round and formalizing what’s really a strategic alignment rather than a financial play. The objective isn’t product launch tomorrow, but shared infrastructure, regulatory know-how and DLT capabilities that a traditional bank can’t efficiently build in-house. With Bit2Me now holding a European CASP license and backed by Telefónica, BBVA, Tether and others, the partnership gives Bankinter a regulated on-ramp into crypto services while positioning Bit2Me to accelerate EU and Latin American expansion. Incumbents choosing integration over competition and regulated crypto platforms becoming the connective tissue between banks and the next financial stack.

Galaxy: Traditional Credit, Onchain Rails

Galaxy pushed structured credit onchain without changing the structure itself. The firm closed its first tokenized Galaxy CLO 2025-1, issued on Avalanche and anchored by a ~$50M allocation from Grove, the institutional credit protocol spun out of the MakerDAO ecosystem. The CLO finances a credit facility to Arch Lending, backed by overcollateralized BTC and ETH loans, with ~$75M deployed so far and capacity to scale to $200M. 

BitMine & Beast Industries: Crypto Capital Meets Distribution

BitMine is taking its Ethereum treasury play somewhere few expected: creator empires. The $200M equity investment in MrBeast’s Beast Industries ties one of the largest ETH-focused balance sheets to a 460-million-subscriber media and commerce ecosystem. Framed by Tom Lee as a way to extend Ethereum exposure beyond pure financial assets, the deal positions BitMine alongside a platform with direct Gen Z and Gen Alpha distribution. For Beast Industries the capital backs continued expansion across content and consumer brands, with DeFi integrations now explicitly on the roadmap.

The winners aren’t reinventing finance from scratch, they’re wiring existing systems into something faster, always-on, and programmable.