Hi all, happy Tuesday! Crypto started the week with a cleaner risk-on tone — BTC beat equities and gold while DeFi and other high-beta sectors pushed higher. 

At the same time, falling stablecoin yields are still sending capital toward RWAs, where protocols like Kamino and Loopscale continue to gain traction. 

We break down both trends in today’s issue.

BTC outpaced traditional benchmarks on March 9, but the more interesting move happened one level down the risk curve. BTC closed up 3.8% on the day, ahead of QQQ at 2.7%, SPY at 2.0%, and gold at 1.5%, yet DeFi beta nearly doubled that move, a sign that traders were putting risk back on rather than hiding exclusively in the majors.

The macro backdrop still mattered, with markets digesting the same geopolitical and commodity shock that drove last week’s repricing, but Monday’s close looked more like selective re-risking than another pure macro panic. The cleaner tell was where capital rotated inside crypto once the tape stabilized.

Cross-sector, the leaderboard was led by Perps at +13.2%, the DeFi Top 20 at +7.8% and Crypto Miners at +6.9%, while Gaming was the only sector in the red at −0.3%. That left a roughly 13.5-point spread between the top and bottom sectors in a single session, and DeFi’s outperformance versus BTC suggests the move had to do with real breadth rather than a narrow beta bid.

DeFi is the more usable takeaway here. Perps posted the biggest move, but that lane was already crowded in yesterday’s issue. DeFi’s 7.8% gain offers a fresher read on the tape: Investors were willing to move back into application-layer risk as ETF flows improved and market-structure headlines turned incrementally better. Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $787.3 million of net inflows, alongside fresh infrastructure headlines from ICE, OKX, Broadridge and Cboe. This fits that shift toward higher-conviction crypto risk.

If DeFi can keep outperforming while BTC holds its lead over equities and gold, the move starts to look like the front edge of a broader catch-up rally instead of a one-day squeeze. The next thing to watch is whether that strength widens beyond the top of the sector table and pulls laggards back into the trade.

— Daniel

RWA momentum

As crypto markets remain cautious, demand for leverage has softened, pushing DeFi yields lower. As shown in the chart below, the market-weighted stablecoin supply rate has fallen to 2.2%, near three-year lows and nearly 200 bps below the 10-year US Treasury yield.

This has pushed investors to seek yield sources uncorrelated with crypto markets, benefiting protocols that offer RWA exposure. As shown below, deposits in Kamino’s RWA markets have reached an all-time high of $1.01 billion, up roughly 78% from $570 million at the start of the year.

The bulk of growth in Kamino’s RWA market has been driven by the PRIME market. PRIME delivers lending yield exposure against over-collateralized pools of Figure’s natively originated HELOCs. The market now has nearly $250 million in outstanding stablecoin loans. As of writing, PRIME offers an 8% APY, with returns reaching as high as 20% through looping strategies.

The chart below shows PRIME deposits over time, alongside borrow utilization for CASH, PYUSD, USDC and USDS. Over the past month, USDC utilization has remained near 100%, while PYUSD, CASH and USDS have all stayed above 90%, highlighting persistent demand despite softer market conditions.

Kamino is not the only Solana money market benefiting from RWA traction. Loopscale, which differentiates itself through an order book-based architecture, has also seen resilient inflows into its USDC OnRe vault.

OnRe delivers exposure to reinsurance-backed yield via its ONyc token. Stablecoins are pooled and deployed into real-world reinsurance contracts, with yield flowing from actual premiums and collateral returns. ONyc deposits on Loopscale have reached an all-time high of $30M, becoming the largest asset by deposits on the platform, only behind USDC. 

Even in risk-off markets, pockets of growth remain. While much of the recent attention has been on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets, which have reduced the exchange’s sensitivity to crypto market cyclicality, the same broader trend is now emerging in lending. Kamino and Loopscale show how RWA demand can diversify deposit and revenue mix away from SOL-denominated assets, bringing in activity that is less reliant on a broad crypto market rebound.

— Carlos

1. Investable Crypto Is Shrinking

Noah Goldberg, Partner at Theia Research, joined The Gwart Show to talk about the shifting dynamics of the crypto market in 2025. They chat about why crypto funds are facing attrition, the “SPAC-like” collapse of recent projects, and the pivot toward fintech rails. Noah breaks down the fundamentals of Hyperliquid, the reality of token overhang, and the challenges for venture capital in an environment of compressed returns.

2. RWA Looping Is Broken

Sonya Kim published an article arguing that RWA looping is structurally broken because RWAs don’t move at DeFi-block speed. Most tokenized funds settle T+1/T+3 (or longer), so building leverage requires many sequential, non-atomic loops that can take weeks to construct and unwind, creating persistent yield drag from settlement delays, buffers, and operational overhead. 

She says today’s workaround is centralized vault operators who internalize these frictions at the expense of LP returns and proposes 3F — a one-click leverage protocol for asynchronous assets — to externalize settlement and redemption frictions into competitively priced services.

DAS NYC's lineup is bringing the biggest names in finance to the stage.

Don't miss the institutional gathering of the year — this March 24−26.