Three institution-focused blockchain networks, Arc, Canton, and Tempo, collectively raised more than $1 billion in a single week this month, drawing fresh attention to the shift underway in how large financial players are approaching crypto infrastructure. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, writing in a May 12 analysis published by CoinDesk, identified the fundraising surge as evidence that the GENIUS Act, signed into law last July, has already begun reshaping investment behavior at the institutional level.

The Three Raises

Circle, the stablecoin issuer behind USDC, raised $222 million on May 11 for its Arc blockchain at a $3 billion fully diluted network valuation. The round drew commitments from BlackRock, a16z Crypto, Apollo Global Management, ARK Invest, and Intercontinental Exchange, with a16z anchoring the deal at $75 million. Arc's testnet had already processed 244 million transactions as of May 5, and Circle is positioning the network as a payment and tokenization layer that competes directly with Ethereum, Solana, and Base.

Digital Asset Holdings, the developer behind the Canton Network, is targeting a $300 million raise at roughly a $2 billion valuation, also led by a16z Crypto. Canton already has backing from BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, S&P Global, and iCapital from prior rounds, including a $135 million raise in June 2025 and a $50 million strategic raise in December 2025. The network is deeply integrated with DTCC's tokenization initiative, which is targeting limited production trades of tokenized securities from July 2026, with more than 50 participating financial firms including BlackRock and JPMorgan.

Tempo, the Stripe-backed payments blockchain, closed its $500 million raise at a $5 billion valuation in October 2025, with Paradigm, Thrive Capital, and Greenoaks among its backers. Its mainnet went live in March 2026, and the company launched a stablecoin advisory unit the following month.

What Hougan Says the Money Signals

Hougan drew three conclusions from the fundraising pattern. First, the GENIUS Act removed a critical legal obstacle. Before that legislation passed last July with bipartisan support (68 to 30 in the Senate, 308 to 122 in the House), stablecoin issuers and infrastructure builders had no federal statute defining their legal status. The Act resolved that by creating a dual federal-state licensing regime for payment stablecoin issuers and explicitly removing them from SEC and CFTC jurisdiction, giving large institutions the confidence to commit capital.

Second, Hougan pointed to enterprise privacy as a genuine product requirement rather than a regulatory workaround. "If you're a business broadcasting every trade before it's complete, or a worker whose paycheck is visible to anyone with a block explorer, that transparency is a bug, not a feature," he wrote. All three blockchains offer private transactions, known validator sets, and compliance-ready architecture precisely because full public transparency is incompatible with how most regulated businesses operate.

Third, he flagged the competitive threat to existing public chains. Corporate-backed networks with major financial backers now have the resources to build parallel infrastructure that could pull institutional volume away from Ethereum and Solana.

The Clarity Act as the Next Catalyst

Hougan also pointed to pending legislation as the next potential unlock. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act was unveiled by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on May 11, one day before his analysis. The bill proposes giving the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital commodity spot markets and includes safe harbor provisions for DeFi developers. Two significant sticking points remain unresolved: a provision restricting stablecoins from paying deposit-like yields, added as a compromise with the banking lobby, and a conflict-of-interest clause limiting government officials' crypto holdings, which has drawn sustained Democratic objections. Both issues are material to whether the White House's July 4 passage target is achievable. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, commenting on the bill's compromise language, said: "Not everyone got everything they wanted, but they got the must-haves."

"The GENIUS Act won't take effect until next year [2026], and once the Clarity Act is put in place, both investment and real-world usage will rise sharply," Hougan said in a separate note.

What This Means Outside the United States

The fundraising cycle has direct relevance for users in Africa and South Asia, where stablecoins and cross-border payments infrastructure are already seeing rapid adoption. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded 52 percent year-over-year growth in on-chain transaction value between July 2024 and June 2025, and stablecoins now account for 43 percent of the region's total crypto volume, according to AFI Global. The scale of the underlying demand is striking: Africa's cross-border business-to-business payments grew from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion per month by mid-2025. For businesses in Nigeria, Ghana, or Kenya paying international suppliers, GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoin rails on networks like Arc or Tempo represent a practical alternative to correspondent banking.

African regulators are also acting on their own timelines. Nigeria enacted its Investments and Securities Act (ISA) 2024 in March 2025, classifying digital assets as securities under domestic SEC oversight. Kenya established its first digital asset licensing regime through the VASP Act in late 2025. The Nairobi Securities Exchange is separately developing KDX, a tokenized real-world asset exchange, underscoring that the region's regulatory momentum is moving in parallel with, not simply in response to, U.S. developments.

India, which receives roughly $125 billion in annual remittances, is a natural market given Tempo's stated goal of Asian expansion by end-2026. Standard Chartered projects that dollar-backed stablecoins could draw up to $1.22 trillion in emerging-market savings deposits by 2028, with India and Pakistan among the most exposed countries. Indian regulators are still building the necessary domestic framework: SEBI is studying a tokenized real-world asset regime, with a finalized ruleset expected by 2027, while international platforms seeking Indian exposure are currently operating through the GIFT City sandbox administered by the IFSCA.

PwC projects that Africa's tokenization market alone could reach $100 billion in 2026. Globally, tokenized real-world assets currently total around $20 billion, or roughly 0.1 percent of global equities, bond, and real estate markets. McKinsey projects that figure could reach $2 trillion by 2030. Whether the Clarity Act reaches the White House by July 4 will determine how quickly institutional capital, which the week's fundraising suggests is increasingly ready to move, actually does so.