Coinbase just made a bet on the future of new tokens with its acquisition of Liquifi, a platform for small startups to distribute and manage new tokens.

Why it matters: It's a sign the U.S.'s biggest crypto exchange is betting that regulators will soon ease restrictions on releasing and selling digital assets.

How it works: Liquifi is a platform that manages all facets of how a new token enters the world.

• Everything from automatically distributing tokens to investors and team members per the vesting schedule to facilitating the public launch distribution, whether it's a sale or a giveaway.
• It's the tokenized version of Carta, which early companies use to distribute equity shares.

What they're saying: "Launching a token today is too hard," Greg Tusar, from Coinbase's product team, wrote in Wednesday's acquisition announcement.

• "We want to remove these barriers by providing both the product and the expertise to make token launches simple, compliant, and scalable."

Zoom out: Millions and millions of dollars have flowed through other token launchpads, most particularly at Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Its program launched some of the most well-known projects in crypto, like Polygon, the Sandbox and Axie Infinity.

• But for several years, any exchange doing its best to stay on the good side of U.S. regulators has had to steer clear of getting involved in this early action.
• In 2017, companies raised several billion dollars selling tokens to the public in what's known as initial coin offerings (ICOs), until the SEC cracked down in early 2018.

The impact: The real value for exchanges is in the long tail of these new offerings, with folks trading new tokens they missed buying: All that trading is the real revenue driver for crypto exchanges.

Yes, but: U.S. regulators are now approaching the crypto industry — and the token issuance question — in a whole different way.

• The SEC has held hearings about how to change regulations to fit the new landscape of blockchain technology.
• One of the most immediate questions for the agency will be how to launch and distribute new tokens.

💭 Our thought bubble: If Coinbase were to use this acquisition to build some kind of launchpad, then a U.S.-based startup will be able to build up a bunch of excitement and users for its product.

• Then when it's ready to go live with a token, it can just tell followers to register for it on Coinbase.
• No weird wallets or strange on-chain song and dances. (No VPNs to fake not being in the U.S.) Just log in, click and buy.

The big picture: A variety of moves out there suggest that companies expect clearer rules for crypto business across the board.

• Circle applied for a bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
• And Kraken, another major U.S.-based exchange that settled with the SEC over staking, brought the product back just as President Trump took office.

The bottom line: All signs suggest rules are coming for new offerings, whether the SEC writes them itself or Congress passes a new law.

There's been a ton of excitement about Circle Internet's new stock since it launched trading on June 5, such that its price has gone up wildly.

Yes, but: There hasn't been any more interest in its stablecoin.

The intrigue: Circle's profits mainly come from the size of that stablecoin, USDC.

• USDC's market cap — a measure of the number of stablecoins in circulation — has been flat since Circle's stock started trading.
• Meanwhile, the market cap of its chief competitor, Tether's USDT, is up 2.5%, or just under $4 billion, over the same period.

💭 Our thought bubble: The main basis for the value of Circle (the company) now is the revenue it earns off the reserves, like short-term U.S. Treasuries, backing USDC.

• That is, not the value of those stablecoins. Just the yield it earns off the assets that guarantee their value (which is a lot less than $60 billion).
• Annualizing its first quarter net income gets $260 million. The current valuation is something like 150X income.

Reality check: Either investors are really optimistic about the Circle Payments Network or this chart might lead to some misgivings.

The U.S. is very much sitting out the move to digital fiat money, but projects are taking off around the globe.

What we're watching: Central bank digital currency is either the natural evolution of money as we know it into the digital age, or the final step into a total surveillance dystopia.

💭 Our thought bubble: Why not both?

The latest: The Atlantic Council has been tracking developments in the digitization of money for years, and it just released an update to its tracker.

• Right now, a record 49 countries have pilots.
• China's digital yuan is by the far the biggest pilot. India's digital rupee is the other one.
• The Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria are still the countries to have fully launched.

Between the lines: Countries favor intermediated CBDCs, according to the Atlantic Council's research. In other words, consumers still need to use them via third parties, like banks or fintechs.

• If there is one main point to cryptocurrency, it's giving consumers a way to hold digital value on their own.

Zoom out: The social credit system for firms in China has alarmed Westerners. It's often cited by American politicians when they object to the idea of making the dollar into a digital currency.

• The Trump White House has made it clear that a CBDC will not move under this administration.

Go deeper: The IMF put out a how-to manual for launching these instruments.

The stereotype of the crypto voter is a white Republican who gets all their information from YouTube.

• Only that last part seems to be right, though, according to new research.

The latest: Paradigm, a large VC fund focused on digital assets, has a new survey out covering people who own cryptocurrency.

• The firm commissioned it from Echelon Insights, which surveyed 4,000 crypto owners online.

By the numbers: These investors are basically divided among Republicans, Democrats and those who don't affiliate with either of the major parties.

• Racially, the breakdown largely mirrors U.S. demographics, with one exception: Black Americans are slightly over-represented among crypto owners, at 19% of the sample (higher than the nearly 14% of the general population).
• Men outnumber women by nearly two-to-one (64% to 36%).

Almost 70% describe themselves as open to risk, and well over half are optimistic about cryptocurrency's financial potential.

• That's reflected in the extent of their bets, too. Almost half (46%) have more than $5,000 in crypto.

Zoom out: As of now, over 90% of all bitcoin on chain is in profit.

Zoom in: Unfortunately, crypto owners favor social media and YouTube for information about the industry.

• Mainstream news organizations are in fifth place, but the good news is we come out ahead of podcasts.

The Bloomberg Intelligence team has had a great track record for projecting the approval of digital asset ETFs, and this week they ranked nine coins as likely to get an ETF wrapper.

• A staked Solana ETF went live Wednesday.
• The SEC also approved an ETF conversion for a fund at Grayscale that includes a combination of five cryptocurrencies (which means that XRP, SOL and ADA are now all in one ETF, alongside BTC and ETH).