Issue No. 003   /   March 26, 2026   /   Let's Get Stacked

Stacked

Become Your Own Best Asset

Forty-six consecutive days of Extreme Fear. The last time that happened, Bitcoin was trading at $15,000 and nobody wanted it. Twelve months later it was north of $60K.

This week: Morgan Stanley just filed the first bank-issued BTC ETF, the SEC handed crypto its clearest regulatory green light in a decade, and Cory Klippsten explains why most people do not actually own the Bitcoin they think they own.

Grab your coffee. Let’s get stacked.

—Emily

Section 01

The Stack

Market Snapshot — March 25, 2026 — 4:00 PM ET

Asset

Price

24H

YTD

BTC

$71,300

+0.4%

-23.7%

ETH

$2,170

+0.5%

-35.2%

Gold

$4,568

+3.5%

+73.9%

Silver

$72.60

+3.5%

+149.5%

S&P 500

6,592

+0.5%

+12.1%

NASDAQ

21,970

+1.0%

+13.8%

DXY

99.63

+0.2%

-8.2%

10Y Treasury

4.33%

+0.2 bps

-5.3%

Fear & Greed Index

14 — Extreme Fear

"Forty-six straight days of Extreme Fear — the longest streak since the FTX collapse. The crowd is terrified. History says that is exactly when you should be paying attention."

Section 02

Future of Finance

Bitcoin, markets, digital assets & macro — curated with your financial future in mind.

Bitcoin & Digital Assets

Morgan Stanley Files First Bank-Issued Bitcoin ETF

Morgan Stanley filed an S-1 for ticker MSBT on NYSE Arca, seeding $1M. First major U.S. bank to directly issue a spot BTC ETF. Coinbase as custodian, BNY Mellon as admin. (CoinDesk)

STACKED Take: Every other spot ETF was built by asset managers. A $5.5T bank cutting out the middleman changes the distribution game permanently.

Strategy Unveils Fresh $42B Bitcoin Buying Program

Saylor’s Strategy announced a new $42B capital raise split between common stock and STRC preferred at 11.25% coupon. Holds 761K BTC — now sitting on unrealized loss below $75,696 cost basis. (CoinDesk)

STACKED Take: Doubling down with borrowed conviction. At 11.25% coupon and BTC below cost basis, the math is getting uncomfortable.

  • BTC fell from $71,300 to $69,400 this week on ceasefire uncertainty

  • Spot ETFs posted $340M net inflows week ending March 24

  • F&G at 14 — 46th straight day of Extreme Fear, longest since FTX

  • Coinbase shares slid 10% on leaked CLARITY Act yield-ban language

Markets & Macro

Fed Holds Rates, Raises Inflation Forecast to 2.7%

FOMC voted 11-1 to hold at 3.50–3.75%, lifting 2026 PCE forecast to 2.7% from 2.4%. Dot plot still signals one cut. Powell’s next-to-last meeting before May exit. (CNBC)

STACKED Take: One dissent, one cut penciled in, a lame-duck chair. This Fed is running out of room and credibility simultaneously.

Oil Whipsaws as Iran Ceasefire Talks Stall

Brent swung $88–$108 as Iran rejected the 15-point U.S. peace proposal and demanded Strait of Hormuz control. Trump declined to commit Thursday, sending equities down 1% and oil surging 5.5%. (CNBC)

STACKED Take: Hormuz is 20% of global crude. Until ships move freely, every asset class trades on headline risk.

  • S&P 500 fell ~1% Thursday after weak $44B Treasury auction

  • Gold near $4,400, down 23% from January’s $5,595 record

  • Defense stocks RTX and LMT up 19–22% month-to-date on war spending

  • Warsh Fed Chair confirmation stalled in Senate Banking Committee

Policy & Regulation

SEC and CFTC Classify 16 Tokens as Commodities

Historic joint rule: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and 14 others classified as digital commodities under a five-category taxonomy. 68-page rule supersedes all prior enforcement-era guidance. (SEC.gov)

STACKED Take: Regulation by taxonomy instead of enforcement — the clearest jurisdictional line crypto has ever gotten from Washington.

Atkins Proposes Four-Year Token Safe Harbor

SEC Chair outlined a three-part safe harbor: crypto startups can raise up to $5M over four years without securities registration. Revives Peirce’s 2020 framework. Public comment expected within weeks. (SEC.gov)

STACKED Take: Atkins is handing builders what Gensler never would — a runway. Congress needs to codify it before the next chair reverses course.

  • CLARITY Act inches toward Senate hearing; spring passage targeted

  • OCC proposed GENIUS Act stablecoin rules; comments due May 1

  • Leaked CLARITY draft rattled markets with stablecoin yield ban

  • Senator Reed introduced bill closing GENIUS foreign-issuer loophole

Section 03

The Boardroom

Business, tech, deal flow & the conversations happening behind closed doors.

Startups & Venture

Harvey Hits $11B Valuation on Legal AI Boom

Legal AI startup raised $200M co-led by Sequoia and GIC, nearly 4x’ing valuation in 13 months. ARR hit $190M with 100K+ lawyers across 1,300 orgs on the platform. (CNBC)

STACKED Take: Vertical AI is where enterprise money is going. Category-specific agents beat general-purpose tools every time.

Granola Hits Unicorn on Meeting AI Play

AI note-taking startup closed $125M Series C at $1.5B, a 6x jump in under a year. Revenue grew 250% last quarter, expanding from transcription into enterprise knowledge infra. (TechCrunch)

STACKED Take: The real product is not meeting notes — it is searchable institutional memory. That is a moat worth paying up for.

  • AI startups captured 41% of all venture dollars on Carta in 2025

  • Q1 2026 VC deployment on pace to exceed all of 2024 combined

  • MatX raised $500M Series B to build Nvidia-challenging LLM chip

  • Qualified Health closed $125M Series B for AI health-system platform

Real Estate & Hard Assets

Iran War Derails 2026 Housing Recovery

Mortgage rates climbed to 6.38% for fourth straight week as oil topped $105. Contract cancellations hit a record 14% of February deals. KB Home slashed full-year guidance by up to $1.3B. (CNBC)

STACKED Take: The spring season everyone was banking on got torpedoed by geopolitics. Expect a buyer’s market through summer.

Miami Ultra-Luxury Defies National Slowdown

$10M+ home sales surged 21% YoY with cash deals at 68% of waterfront transactions in Q1. Foreign buyers poured $4.4B into South Florida residential in 2025, up 42%. (LuxuryHomes.com)

STACKED Take: Miami’s ultra-luxury tier operates on a different balance sheet — all-cash, tax-driven, and increasingly global.

  • 30-year fixed jumped from 5.99% to 6.5% since Iran strikes began

  • Miami condo inventory up 42% from Q4 2025, creating rare buyer window

  • KB Home cut 10% of workforce, shifted 70% of builds to made-to-order

  • Fed signaled only one rate cut this year — mortgage relief delayed

Big Tech & Innovation

Nvidia Unveils Vera Rubin, Eyes $1T Revenue

At GTC 2026, Jensen Huang debuted Vera Rubin — a full-stack AI supercomputer delivering 10x performance per watt over Blackwell. Raised cumulative revenue forecast to $1T through 2027. (CNBC)

STACKED Take: Nvidia is no longer selling chips — it is selling the factory floor for the AI economy, and nobody else is close.

OpenAI Ships GPT-5.4 With Computer Use

GPT-5.4 launched with 1M-token context window, native desktop and browser control, and 33% fewer hallucinations. OpenAI’s first model with autonomous computer-use capabilities. (TechCrunch)

STACKED Take: Computer use turns AI from chatbot to junior analyst. Adoption will accelerate fast from here.

  • Apple planning standalone Siri app and AI agent overhaul for iOS 27

  • Meta tapped as lead customer for AMD’s next-gen EPYC AI server chips

  • xAI shipped Grok 4.20 with four-agent architecture and 128K context

  • NIST launched AI Agent Standards Initiative with March comment deadline

Business & Leadership

Inc. Drops 2026 Female Founders 500 List

Annual list spotlights 500 women-led companies generating $12.3B combined revenue and raising $12.2B in funding. First year including international founders alongside U.S.-based leaders. (Inc.)

STACKED Take: The revenue proves it — women founders do not have a pipeline problem. They have a capital allocation problem.

Only 5 Female CEOs in 50-Stock Leadership ETF

Benzinga analysis of Wedbush ReturnOnLeadership ETF: just 10% of holdings led by women. McKinsey confirms women hold 29% of C-suite roles for the 11th consecutive year. (Benzinga)

STACKED Take: Eleven years of stagnation is not a gap — it is a structural failure. Investors should be pricing in the governance risk.

  • BP named Meg O’Neill CEO — first woman to lead a Big Oil major

  • LVMH appointed Laura Burdese as next CEO of Bvlgari

  • Women hold just 11% of Fortune 500 CEO seats — a record high

  • Kikoff founder Cynthia Chen hit unicorn status with 4M+ users

Section 04

Wellness & Longevity

Your body is part of your investment portfolio. Invest in yourself.

Body & Performance

Premature Menopause Raises Heart Risk 40%

JAMA Cardiology study of 10K+ women: menopause before 40 carries 40% higher lifetime coronary heart disease risk. Black women face triple the rate of premature menopause. (STAT News)

STACKED Take: If your OB is not asking about your menopause timeline alongside your cholesterol — find one who will.

Rhonda Patrick Shares Full Longevity Stack

On Huberman Lab: 1.3g protein per kg, daily creatine, 2g omega-3s, IF by 7 PM, CrossFit-style training. Called metabolic flexibility the real longevity lever. (Huberman Lab)

STACKED Take: Most actionable longevity blueprint a woman can run right now. Bookmark it.

  • Cleveland Clinic: stopping Ozempic doesn’t guarantee weight rebound

  • Creatine boosts reaction time in menopausal women per new RCT

  • Japanese interval walking surges 2,986% in search — 30 min, no gym

  • Life Time survey: 42% now prioritize strength over weight loss

Mind & Longevity

Five Minutes of Meditation Cuts Inflammation

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson on Huberman Lab: 5 minutes daily lowers IL-6 within 28 days. Called early-practice anxiety the ‘lactate of the mind’ — a sign it is working. (Huberman Lab)

STACKED Take: If the first week feels awful, you are doing it right. That is the research talking.

Leaky Blood-Brain Barrier Drives Cognitive Decline

Science Translational Medicine: retired contact-sport athletes still have leaky blood-brain barriers a decade post-career. Triggers chronic immune activation tied to memory loss. (Nature)

STACKED Take: Brain protection is not just helmets — it is inflammation management for the long game.

  • Sleep apnea tied to 40% higher odds of depression in adults 45+

  • 12 weeks intense exercise reversed ~10 months of proteomic aging

  • 34% of Americans report rising stress entering 2026

  • Teacher wellbeing training improved student math scores in 13K study

Section 05

This Week on STACKED

New episodes every Tuesday at 7 AM EST

003. The Man Who Called FTX, Luna & Celsius | Swan Bitcoin’s Cory Klippsten on Real Bitcoin

Real Bitcoin vs. Paper Bitcoin

with Cory Klippsten

Swan Bitcoin’s Cory Klippsten on self-custody, scam-spotting, and why most people do not actually own the Bitcoin they think they own. A no-fluff masterclass on what it means to hold real BTC.

Section 06

The Takeaways

Five things worth remembering from this week's episode — whether you listened or not.

01 Real vs. Paper Bitcoin

If you cannot take self-custody of it, you do not own it — you own a promise. And promises break. Know the difference.

02 Most Exchanges Are Casinos

Their business model is getting you to trade as much as possible. Swan is built on the opposite principle — buy and hold.

03 How Cory Spots Scams Early

He called SBF a liar publicly months before FTX collapsed. Not because he had proof — because he could smell the BS. He shares the framework.

04 Bitcoin Is a Monetary Revolution

Not following an iPhone adoption curve. This is on the scale of steam power or the internet — 5 to 8 decades, not 5 to 8 years.

05 Buy a Little Now

It makes you learn. The more you own, the more you understand. Waiting until you fully get it first is the trap.

If this gave you one new idea — forward it to someone who needs it. We grow because you share. See you next week.

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