RaaS #626: S&P 500 Goes Onchain!

Respan Raises a $5M Seed Round, Visa Crypto Labs unveiled Visa CLI, and Moar!

S&P Dow Jones Indices partnered with trade[XYZ] to launch the first official S&P 500 perpetual contract, now live exclusively on Hyperliquid. After 69 years as the benchmark for global finance, the index is finally accessible 24/7/365 without intermediaries or market hours. A massive step toward continuous, borderless markets.

Europe's largest asset manager Amundi (€2.3T AUM) launched a new tokenized mutual fund (SAFO) in partnership with Spiko, powered by Chainlink infrastructure. This signals accelerating institutional adoption as legacy finance giants move real assets onchain.

Polymarket has acquired Brahma, the DeFi infrastructure startup behind smart accounts and automated execution tools. The Brahma team, which built vaults and payment settlement connecting crypto to credit cards over four years, will join Polymarket to scale prediction markets to mainstream audiences.

Your daily dose of bite-sized crypto news.

1. BNB Chain hit a new all-time high of $3B TVL in RWAs.

2. Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program grew from 85 to 100+ partners in one week.

3. Institutional BTC demand hit its highest levels since October 2025, absorbing 81,200 BTC last month with 6x new supply.

4. Kenya published draft VASP regulations covering licensing and stablecoin reserves, open for comment until April 10.

5. Algorand Foundation cut 25% of staff, citing macro uncertainty and market downturn.

Respan announced a $5M seed round led by Gradient Ventures to build self-driving observability, evals, and gateway infrastructure for AI agents. Already processing 1B+ logs and 2T+ tokens monthly across 100+ teams, they're positioning as critical infrastructure for the agent economy.

Visa Crypto Labs unveiled Visa CLI, their first experimental product bridging traditional payments with crypto rails. The tool signals Visa's continued push to integrate blockchain infrastructure into mainstream financial products.

Block, Inc. has quietly rehired some of the 4,000 employees it laid off last month after discovering some cuts were linked to clerical errors. An awkward reversal that raises questions about the company's internal processes during cost-cutting.

The classic, buy high, sell low.

Top Gainers: SOS, XAN, Q, ARIA, HASH.

High-signal reads are worth your time, all in one place.

1. Solana's secret weapon for payments.

2. Why most crypto teams ship wrong.

3. Privacy layers are finally getting serious.

4. What founders miss about distribution.

5. The VC playbook is dead.

Cryptodotcom announced a 12% workforce reduction as CEO Kris Marszalek pushes an enterprise-wide AI transformation. His warning was blunt: companies failing to adopt AI immediately risk collapse, with slow adopters falling behind in scale and execution.

RWA tokenization has crossed $25B and is now growing independent of broader crypto market cycles. The real opportunity isn't direct token exposure; it's the lending infrastructure layer, where Morpho and Fluid are positioning as key players.

Google dropped "Stitch," an AI design tool that converts prompts or napkin sketches into production-ready UI with full HTML/CSS or React code in seconds. It features an AI-native infinite canvas, voice input, and direct exports to Cursor, Claude Code, and Figma. Potentially reshaping the design-to-dev workflow entirely.

That’s all for today!