$730B AUM Apollo Unveils Tokenized Credit Fund

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Good Morning.

From Apollo tokenizing private credit to Fairshake piling up millions for crypto-friendly candidates, the industry's power plays are in full swing and even with slower deal flows, $170M still moved. Oh, and SBF’s parents want a Trump pardon? Just another week in crypto.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: $730B AUM Apollo Launches Tokenized Private Credit Fund 🪙 

• Founders Highlight: Ilja Moisejevs of Tensor & Vector 👨 

• Deal Flow: Irreducible’s $24M Series A 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

Apollo Launches Tokenized Private Credit Fund

State of play: Apollo, a $730B AUM investment firm, has introduced a tokenized private credit fund in collaboration with security token specialist Securitize.

• The Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) is Apollo’s first public on-chain offering for accredited investors.

• It marks Securitize’s first integration with Solana and Ink, alongside Ethereum, Aptos, Avalanche, and Polygon.

• The fund, managing over $1.2B, invests in corporate direct lending, asset-backed finance, and structured credit, delivering an 11.7% return in 2024.

• Apollo’s daily subscription and NAV structure makes it well-suited for blockchain markets, offering a higher-yield alternative to stablecoins and tokenized treasuries.

• Securitize is using Wormhole to enable multichain interoperability.

What’s next: Apollo aims to expand tokenization into DeFi, smart contract-driven collateral management, and secondary liquidity for alternative assets.

For builders and investors: With global private credit AUM reaching $2.1T in 2023, Apollo’s move highlights the growing interest in tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs).

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Ilja Moisejevs of Tensor & Vector

Intro: Ilja Moisejevs is the co-founder and CEO of Tensor and Vector. Tensor is a Solana NFT marketplace and Vector is a Tensor-owned mobile social trading app with a built-in crypto wallet.

• Vector is earning more than $90M in annualized revenue from a 1% trading fee, 10x bigger than Tensor’s NFT marketplace.

Previous background: Prior to Tensor, Ilja co-founded CalypsoAI (2018–2021), an AI security firm backed by Lightspeed and Lockheed. Before that, he worked in product at GoCardless (2016–2018) and in M&A at BofA Merrill Lynch (2015–2016).

The big idea: Recently, Tensor announced a plan to split Vector's revenue, with 50% to the TNSR treasury (for airdrops, and grants) and 50% to Tensor’s developer shop. Future votes may enable token buybacks or burns.

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INSIGHTS

Crypto PAC Fairshake Raises $116M for 2026 Midterms

State of play: Crypto-focused PAC Fairshake has raised $116M for the 2026 midterms, with backing from Coinbase, Ripple, a16z ($20M+), and Jump Crypto ($10M), according to Politico. Robert Leshner has also contributed, Axios reports.

• Fairshake, which raised $200M+ in the last election cycle, supports crypto-friendly candidates.

• It played a key role in Republican Bernie Moreno's Ohio Senate victory and spent $40M alongside Defend American Jobs to support him.

• Moreno, now on the Senate Banking Committee, has joined a digital asset-focused panel led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis.

DEAL FLOWS

Irreducible’s $24M Series A

Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $170M in deals 💼 

Zero-knowledge (ZK) infrastructure firm Irreducible has secured a $24M Series A funding round, co-led by Paradigm and Bain Capital Crypto, with support from Fenbushi, Iterative L2, Robot Ventures, and prominent angels.

• The funding will drive Irreducible’s mission to build a verifiable Internet where transactions, identities, and content are cryptographically verified.

• Its flagship proof system, Binius, is setting new standards in efficient cryptographic proving.

• Binius is leveraging custom FPGA-based data centres to power zkVMs for Risc Zero, Polygon, and others.

Deal flows in the past week:

• MinionLab, $2M Pre-Seed Round

• Printr, $2.5M Pre-Seed Round

• Accrue, $1.58M Seed Round

• Inception, $3.5M Seed Round

• Cedar Money, $9.9M Seed Round

• Pod Network, $10M Seed Round

• Cryptio, $15M Series A Round

• Irreducible, $24M Series A Round

• SignalPlus, $11M Series B Round

• Pell Network, $3.5M Strategic Round

• Elastos, $20M Strategic Round

• Analog, $5M Unknown Round

• WLFI, $10M Unknown Round

• Pixion Games, $12.4M Unknown Round

• Humanity Protocol, $20M Unknown Round

• D3 Global, $25M Unknown Round

QUICK BITES

• Fairshake raises $116M for 2026 midterms.

• Coinbase files to list Solana and Hedera futures.

• NYSE Arca moves to convert Grayscale's XRP trust.

• USDT returns to Bitcoin with Lightning Labs partnership.

• CME Group to introduce options on Bitcoin Friday Futures.

• Crypto kicks off 2025 with $74M lost to hacks in January.

• Apollo & Securitize launching access to tokenized credit fund.

• US SEC approves Bitwise's combined Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF.

• Sam Bankman-Fried's parents seek Trump pardon for their son.

• Arkansas Senate rejects bill to ban crypto mining near military facilities.

• Kraken relaunches staking in US roughly two years after settling SEC charges.

• Czech central bank approves proposal to assess investing reserves in Bitcoin.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• CryptoVizArt’s read on Thinking Ahead.

• Hitesh’s read on Abstract Chain Key Metrics.

• pStake Finance’s read on On the Verge of Something ₿ig.

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