The source of the dispute is the fast-growing world of tokenized equities, which let users trade shares of popular companies but in a blockchain wrapper. The likes of Robinhood, Kraken, and even BlackRock are all dabbling in this technology, whose advantages include easy 24/7 trading and instant settlement. Holding stock on a blockchain also reduces middlemen, and expands opportunities to deploy equity-based collateral.

So what’s not to like? According to Citadel, the problem is DeFi platforms like Uniswap. Right now, traders use them to swap billions of dollars of crypto every day—and soon large volumes of tokenized Nvidia or Apple stock could be sloshing around these platforms, too. And if the SEC grants certain exemptions that Andreessen and its DeFi allies are seeking, Uniswap and others will get to operate as de facto brokerages—without taking on the legal responsibilities that go with that. These include displaying the price of every trade or ensuring customers get the best price. Citadel also warns of “fragmenting liquidity” as stock investing gets split between two parallel systems.

In response to the letter, the founder of Uniswap (one of Andreessen’s blue-ribbon portfolio companies) took to X to accuse Citadel of slandering DeFi in order to protect its lucrative role as the “king of shady tradfi market makers.” Other prominent names in crypto piled on as well, accusing the firm of trying to smother innovation.

At first glance, it appears both sides have a point. If tokenized stock trading breaks into the mainstream, it would threaten Citadel’s business model of paying firms like Robinhood for their orders and using that volume to make trading profits. So the company’s letter to the SEC is clearly based in self-interest. That said, Citadel’s concerns about liquidity are not unreasonable—if the pool of U.S. stocks is divided into two separate pools, doesn’t that make trading more expensive for everyone? Likewise, it’s fair to ask if the SEC would be wise to grant exemptions on investor protection rules that have historically served the public very well.

In reading the letter, it’s remarkable to read its claims that the likes of automated AMMs, block builders, validators and layer 2 blockchains are basically brokerages—less for the argument itself, than that Citadel and the SEC are discussing this stuff at all. It wasn’t long ago when only a handful of crypto diehards knew what these terms even meant. Now, they have become mainstream enough to be part of a non-crypto firm’s correspondence with the SEC, and there is no doubt they’re here to stay.

As for which side is going to prevail, it’s worth noting the fight pits two of the most powerful firms in the country against each other. On one side, there is Citadel, which is owned by Ken Griffin, one of the richest and most combative people in the country. On the other is Andreessen, an influential VC firm that doubles as a PR firm and lobbying agency with immense clout in Washington, DC. For now, it feels Griffin may be able to slow down the spread of tokenized equities but, as with any superior technology, he will be unable to stop it.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

DECENTRALIZED NEWS

Binance’s new look: The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange announced Yi He as co-CEO, confirming her status as the most powerful woman in crypto, while also establishing a de facto corporate headquarters for the first time via major licenses in Abu Dhabi. (Fortune)

Alt-coin winter: The recent downturn has battered alts with the sector shedding $200 billion since market peak. Memecoins have been hit particularly hard, due in part to the sheer number of them, but also because they are competing with a growing number of other speculative opportunities like prediction markets. (Bloomberg)

If at first you don’t succeed: Coinbase plans to relaunch in India early next year. It first opened shop in 2022, but was forced to retreat a year later in the face of hostile regulators who blocked its access to the country’s national payments network. (TechCrunch)

Mining mischief: The Malaysian government is using drones and a cross-agency task force to go after thousands of illegal Bitcoin mining operations that hop from place to place, and have stolen over $1 billion of electricity. (Bloomberg)

Saylor selling? The fraught world of DATs got dicier as Strategy said it might sell Bitcoin as a last resort. The move comes as Strategy’s share price fell below mNAV as the firm faces looming dividend obligations—but there is also a case that Saylor’s corporate strategy wizardry means the firm will be just fine. (Fortune)

MAIN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK

Samsul Said—Bloomberg/Getty Images

CZ wins the main character title this week as his debate with goldbug Peter Schiff helped drive a flood of social media attention around the Binance founder who looks very much back in the crypto game.

MEME O’ THE MOMENT

@haonan

After the U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent co-opted beloved children’s character Franklin the Turtle to pitch T-bills, it didn’t take long for CT to expand the meme to stablecoins. 

Fortune Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 8–9 to convene the smartest people we know—technologists, entrepreneurs, Fortune Global 500 executives, investors, policymakers, and the brilliant minds in between—to explore and interrogate the most pressing questions about AI at another pivotal moment. Register here.

“There’s a bit of fatigue from uncertainty right now,” Yuval Atsmon, CFO of McKinsey, told me when we met in Washington, D.C., to discuss how finance chiefs navigated 2025 and the impact of AI. He often hears some executives joke, “Can we just have something that has a precedent?”

Following President Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, Atsmon said significant uncertainty emerged around the new administration’s economic and geopolitical agenda. “If I look at the peak of uncertainty, what I was focused on as a CFO was: What are the things that I should be doing that would be helpful in any scenario?” Atsmon said. “The worst thing is inaction,” he added. Acting on what you can control builds resilience, he said.

Key questions included: How can you improve liquidity and operational efficiency? What costs can be delayed or eliminated? Which investments are essential, and which can be stopped?

While uncertainty often drives defensive moves, Atsmon noted the importance of reviewing long-standing strategies and seizing competitive opportunities. “I wouldn’t recommend anyone stop making AI investments at this moment,” he said, adding that some actions are still driven by inertia, not strategy.

“The other thing that I think is different in 2025 than it was over the last 100 years is that so much of resource allocation now happens through the technology function of the company,” Atsmon said.

Yet there’s still uncertainty about AI’s readiness to impact the bottom line. McKinsey already uses AI to handle up to 30% of its tasks—such as faster research and better summarization—but “you can’t really do a full strategic analysis yet,” he said. Timelines vary widely by company.

Atsmon pointed to new McKinsey research estimating profound changes in how work is done by 2030. People will need to reorganize how they create value or take on different activities. For CFOs, curiosity about technology is useful, but the core responsibility is enabling the organization to respond at the right pace—neither moving so fast that it creates financial strain nor so slowly that competitiveness erodes, he said.

For most organizations, he believes AI efforts should be “80% on productivity for growth and 20% on productivity for efficiency.” The biggest opportunity, he said, lies not in reducing headcount but in unlocking better uses of time.

Ultimately, leveraging AI requires a willingness to reimagine how work gets done. It is a cross-functional C-suite effort. “More than ever,” Atsmon said, “managing uncertainty—economic, geopolitical, and technological—comes down to planning for the best, but also preparing for the worst.”

SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Jennifer DiRico was appointed EVP and CFO of PTC (Nasdaq: PTC), effective Jan. 1. DiRico succeeds Kristian Talvitie, who will continue to serve as CFO through Dec. 31. DiRico’s experience ranges from large-scale enterprise software organizations to high-growth technology companies. She currently serves as CFO of Commvault, a cyber resilience company. Before Commvault, DiRico spent several years at Toast in finance and operations leadership roles.

David Hastings was appointed CFO of Trevi Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRVI), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, effective Jan. 6. Hastings brings over 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, he was CFO at Arbutus from June 2018 until March 2025. Previously, he was SVP and CFO of Unilife from 2015 until 2017.  Prior to that, Hastings spent the majority of his career as CFO and EVP at Incyte. 

Big Deal

“Global Economic Outlook Q1 2026: AI Tailwinds Boost Otherwise Weak Growth” is an economic research report published by S&P Global Ratings. Some key takeaways from the report include that global growth is holding up better than expected into 2026, helped by AI-driven investment and exports, even as underlying demand stays relatively soft. Also, forecasts have been revised up in many countries, but policy uncertainty, labor markets, bond yields, and the risk that AI underdelivers on earnings all remain key threats to the outlook.

Going deeper

KPMG’s latest “M&A trends in financial services” report is a review of M&A in Q3 for each of the banking, capital markets, and insurance sectors, with the latest data and top deals, as well as an outlook for M&A.

“Momentum from the prior quarter, driven by regulatory rollback and private equity interest, persisted in the third quarter of 2025,” according to the report. “However, inflation, credit quality concerns, trade policy uncertainty, and geopolitical tensions posed significant challenges, requiring adept navigation.”

Overheard

“In the days after the acquisition was completed, I was asked during a media interview if good luck was a factor in bringing together these two tech industry stalwarts. Replace good luck with good timing, and the answer is a resounding, ‘Yes!'”

—Amit Walia, the CEO of Informatica, a Salesforce company, writes in a Fortune opinion piecetitled, “Why the timing was right for Salesforce’s $8 billion acquisition of Informatica—and for the opportunities ahead.”

Granted, it feels like it’s always been a crazy few weeks in AI. But this cycle has been especially notable: Reports that Sam Altman has declared a “code red” around improving ChatGPT have made waves, while Databricks is reportedly in talks to raise at a jaw-dropping $134 billion valuation. Anthropic is reportedly looking at a real-life IPO, and everyone’s always watching for news from perhaps the biggest ascent of the year: Cursor, the AI coding juggernaut that’s now valued at more than $29 billion. 

And today, Brainstorm AI starts, and so many of these key players will be with us live in San Francisco, including Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, Cursor CEO Michael Truell, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, plus some starpower from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne. 

If you’re attending the conference, come find me! I’ll realistically be the one running around in a bright pantsuit. And if you can’t make it, we’ll be livestreaming the show, too – tune in here.

See you soon,

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X:@agarfinks
Email:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Venture Deals

– Antithesis, a Tysons Corner, Va.-based platform designed to validate that software works before it launches, raised $105 million in Series A funding. JaneStreet led the round and was joined by AmplifyVenturePartners, SparkCapital, and others.

– ParadigmHealth, a Columbus, Ohio-based clinical research platform, raised $78 million in Series B funding. ARCHVenturePartners led the round and was joined by DFJGrowth and existing investors.

– Oxzo, a Santiago, Chile-based provider of oxygenation services for aquaculture, raised $25 million in funding from S2GInvestments.

– Quanta, a San Francisco-based accounting platform, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round and was joined by OperatorCollective, NavalRavikant, DesignerFund, and others.

– LizzyAI, a New York City-based AI-powered talent interviewing company, raised $5 million in seed funding. NEA led the round and was joined by Speedinvest and ZeroPrimeVentures. 

– PvX, a Singapore-based provider of user-acquisition financing for gaming companies, raised $4.7 million in a seed extension from Z Venture Capital, DrivebyDraftKings, and existing investors.

– Corma, a Paris, France-based developer of a copilot for AI teams, raised €3.5 million ($4.1 million) in seed funding. XTXVentures led the round and was joined by TuesdayCapital, KimaVentures, 50Partners, OlympeCapital, and angel investors.

Private Equity

– NITEOProducts, a portfolio company of HighlanderPartners, acquired Folexport, a Tualatin, Ore.-based manufacturer of carpet, fabric, and hard surface cleaning products. Financial terms were not disclosed.