On January 21, 2025, Circle’s IPO filings disclosed that the company acquired Hashnote for $9.9 million in cash and approximately 2.9 million fully vested common shares, which Circle valued at about $99.8 million at the time (pre-IPO estimate), as reported by The Block.
I joined Hashnote as a 0-to-1 marketing hire when the company was at $30 million in AUM. 16 months later, before the Circle acquisition, Hashnote’s AUM peaked at $1.8 billion.
Below, I outline the Product-Led Growth mentality behind that journey and the step-by-step development that supported it: placing deliberate bets, expanding the ecosystem organically, and building the brand identity in ways that made growth available to us rather than chasing vanity metrics.
The decision process was always rooted in first-principles thinking, which Leo Mizuhara repeatedly emphasized, and the team listened. At its core, that meant understanding how to build a superior product and create real value at every step, not just tokenize for the sake of tokenization, but really think through the whole process to ensure it actually solves something. Growth did not come from a single breakthrough. It came from compounding good decisions over time.
Looking across the industry, it is hard not to notice how many foundations, protocols, and adjacent players missed on how to make Product/BD/Marketing to work as one unit. Billions of dormant capital just can’t get it right. Some are still building Solana or Ethereum killers, while others think in terms of “we just build, and they come”. Unfortunately, the level of noise is ramping up, and only having a good product is not enough. Growth and Go-to-markets are not an answer by themselves either ¯\(ツ)/¯
What is a Product-Led-Growth Initiative?
The PLG initiative starts way before the go-to-market brief and never really ends as a marketing function. Rather than having a separation between sales, product, and marketing at the execution level, PLG brings together Product/BD/Marketing as a constant operational pod in charge of the response ability to market feedback. This approach enables continuity in PLG evolution, rather than a one-and-done go-to-market by PMMs.
Marketing milestones
A big part of the brand-building effort was to define the category itself. When we started, the term TMMF was not widely used. In practice, that was partly because tokenized money market funds, as a category, were still emerging, and partly because there were valid compliance questions about how to describe the product correctly. I pushed internally, including discussions with our general counsel, Andrew, to start referring in all our comms to the category as tokenized money market funds, or TMMFs.
from rwa.xyz
That mattered because if you want the market to understand what you are building, you need to use accurate industry-congruent language. Category definition is one of the most important parts of early brand building. Many fail at this step.
Product-Led Growth Initiative #1 - Covered Calls to Yield
When Hashnote got acquired, at least 70% of the assets were Tokenized Money Market Funds represented by USYC. However, back in October of 2023, internally, no one was really excited about USYC. Like at all. Fed-backed stablecoin issuers typically compete for the APY around the Fed rate (roughly ~4%). Digital asset managers like Hashnote generally take the fee. In our case, the fee was as low as 10% of the generated yield, bringing us to ~0.4%.
The first product we zoned in on was covered calls on BTC, ETH, and other crypto altcoin assets. It wasn’t really hitting the market. We looked for partners, designed activation campaigns with Nonco and others. Either covered calls on ETH, BTC, and alts were too exotic a product for the taste of crypto natives, and TradFi players skinny-dipping into crypto, or the market just felt the taste of the bull run in the air.
Bitcoin started its bull run around November. Making a statement that selling covered calls profitably might become quite a non-trivial problem to solve.
Meanwhile, every communication touchpoint or go-to-market execution would bring back feedback that interest in USYC was there.
Leo Mizuhara for Coindesk TV - Sometime in November 2023
Product-Led Growth Initiative #2 USYC - First yield-bearing collateral backed by tokenized overnight repo agreements for institutions providing unlimited Instant access to digital dollars.
To say it bluntly, you can swap millions of dollars in USYC back into USDC, PYUSD, or USDT at any point of your cosmic journey - because it’s a blockchain contract (duh) that’s available for your transactions in atomic fashion, mostly the same or next block on Ethereum : )
You would think money market funds are the most boring product. Getting in and out of your traditional money market funds could take you a day or two. Everything changes when you bring MMF onchain and make in and out conversions (swaps) seamless.
Even today, how many products let you get in and out of a tokenized money market fund within 1 or 2 eth blocks, with unlimited liquidity, if you are a regulated entity or institution? USYC already has thousands of flawless transactions.
At this point, it was clear that it’s not just about bringing money markets on-chain or tokenizing them. It was about how it was done - it was all about speed, liquidity, and operational usability. Even a year after the acquisition of USYC, it remains the only product that can be set up to swap stablecoin and TMMF in any size at any time. Why? First principles, as Leo pointed out repeatedly.
Rising interest in the TMMF dictated the next step in growth.
Sometime in November 2023
Product-Led Growth Initiative #3 Harbor at Anchorage. Building distribution through custody.
USYC was gaining traction.
The question was: how does USYC become part of institutional operating reality? Custody was step one.
In July 2024, Anchorage Digital announced Hashnote Harbor, a solution that enabled Anchorage Digital customers to access Hashnote products without assets ever leaving the safety of Anchorage Digital.
Needless to say, once again, we see the Win-Win principle at work, allowing all parties to win something important to them. This was an important PLG motion as custodians solve trust, controls, and workflow problems in the ecosystem.
Anchorage Digital, Hashnote Launch New Solution for Crypto Asset Management - 07/2024
Product-Led Growth Initiative #4:Opportunistic Stablecoin Yield Strategy.
“By early Q3 of 2024, Hashnote launched the Opportunistic Stablecoin Yield Strategy, leveraging industry partnerships and DeFi expertise to identify high-yield opportunities within the stablecoin ecosystem. The strategy utilizes subsidies from protocols and companies looking to grow their on-chain volumes, offering annualized returns ranging from 15% to 40%*,” - From Hashnote’s Q4 2024 newsletter
How did we get there? Again, circling back on the necessity of doing the right things. As Hashnote was working out USYC custody with Paxos, Leo was looking for ways to improve our bottom line, and the partnership with stablecoin issuers like Paxos had several angles to explore.
For instance, one angle is that if your stablecoin can seamlessly swap with a compliant, yield-bearing, tokenized asset that could potentially also be used as collateral, you can use this as part of the stablecoin issuer's growth engine.
We can see how Kraken is doing exactly this, working USDG into its growth engine and connecting it further with USDG’s Global Dollar Network. (In general, the ability to build smart ecosystem partnerships is more likely to define your fate in Web3/crypto.) Besides this, Kraken is doing a super impressive growth job in the tokenized stocks with the different and impressive go-to-market motions for Europe and the US. USDG is worth mentioning to show how you build a diverse playbook layer by layer, with the product at the base and BD and marketing steering the ride.
For us, it was an expansion as well. Clearly, if you are holding millions of dollars in PYUSD, you’d prefer to convert them to USYC and back without unnecessary hops.
Win-win again.
Opportunistic Stablecoin Yield Strategy by Hashnote
Product-Led Growth Initiative #5. Index = buy & sell basket
During our morning standups, the team kept bringing up the idea of running our own index in early 2024. ETFs, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum, were being launched right and left, remember? Hence, an idea of our own index. We were not ready for any marketing or product lift of our own - there was so much happening with the core business. Solution?
“Hashnote Partners with CoinDesk Indices to Launch the Hashnote CoinDesk 20 Fund, Providing Access to the Leading Digital Asset Class Benchmark”
03/2024
Did you know Hashnote was the first company to offer access to the Coindesk 20 index, where you would actually hold all underlying assets, vs holding shares of a fund holding Coindesk 20 constituents? Big difference from a risk perspective.
Helping CoinDesk define a new category of their own, in turn, allowed us to design a 12-touchpoint joint marketing initiative focused on the CoinDesk audience. The initiative turned out to be a win-win again. We had some timely pieces, and our BD director, Jason, even coined the term “Hunt for yield” in several communications to RIAs and CoinDesk readers about Bitcoin assets.
Check them out 👇👇👇 - that’s just less than 1% of positioning done right.
- Trump's Resilience Accelerates Crypto Bull Market - By Jason Leibowitz, Head of Private Wealth at Hashnote
- How Blockchain is Enhancing Efficiency and Transparency in Finance - Interview with Leo Mizuhara by Kim Greenberg Klemballa, CoinDesk Indices
- A Hunt for Yield: The Next Chapter in Crypto Portfolio Optimization By Jason Leibowitz
Product-Led Growth Initiative #6. “USYC is listed on Deribit, powered by Fireblocks’ off-exchange infrastructure. QCP is driving the initiative.”
Apparently, between a custodian and an exchange, there is a middle ground called an off-exchange solution that lets you trade on an exchange without your assets leaving the safety of a custodian. Hence, Fireblocks off-exchange solution.
USYC got listed as collateral on Deribit. Deribit had to undergo a 6-month process with its VARA regulator to make it happen. And what I love about properly executed marketing is that it creates a story, and if there is a story, anything can happen in this world.
It all started at the Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit in London, at this panel 👇👇👇
👉👉👉 Watch the full panel here
👉👉👉 Watch one of the the bit’s used for brand positioning and driving industry narrative
And that’s where we ended up.
10/2024
Another important note: Deribit’s creative team came up with the motto “You ❤️ Yield.” Our whole team fell in love right away, so we had to ask Deribit for permission to use it for Hashnote as well, not just for Deribit’s launch. What a great collaboration, when your partner comes up with such a great execution!!
Shortly after all of this just started to play out, we learned that instead of the next round, we are getting bought out… 😔
Product-Led Growth Initiative #7. In search of privacy
One of the most interesting developments of late was our partnership with Canton. Hashnote was one of the original supervalidators.
Privacy-enabled blockchains, or at least privacy-like functionality, is the major unlock for crypto adoption for routine daily ops on the institutional and banking end. You can find a win-win angle on your own.
What I really enjoyed from the marketing perspective is how, in the process of helping each other to define their own category, this panel discussion, "Collateral Confidential: The Privacy Unlock for Institutional Crypto Trading," came into existence.
Onchain transparency and visible collateral flows in and out of exchanges can reveal strategic moves, potentially tipping your hand and raising the odds of ending up on the wrong side of the trade. Privacy-first, compliant networks like CantonNetwork and tokenized money market assets like $USYC empower institutions, market makers, and trading desks to gain a strategic edge in day-to-day operations.
Watch the full panel here - (It’s worth it, I promise)
Product-Led Growth Initiative #8 Hunt for the yield
And of course, as we are talking about the digital assets, we can not avoid the King in the room staring us down from the first mention of digital assets - Bitcoin. Strangely enough, BTC code happened to have this option that allows you to actually lock it out while in your wallet - not sure if you participated or not -but this sparked a lot of TVL growth in 2024.
Previously, we generated yield on the assets at your custodian; now you can just lock Bitcoin in your own wallet and earn yield! Bitcoin in the meantime can’t go anywhere, can’t be unlocked either - smart contracts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
One of the first partnerships we struck in this area was with Core - as we were exploring how to introduce Hashonte to Core’s audience, the idea of a quarterly call came up, and here we are.
The PLG Finale
Hope the outlined logic really demonstrates how capable operators work. Again, think about first principles when building; drive marketing through a consistent PLG lens rather than treating all marketing as a series of GTMs.
Hashnote’s team numbered under 15 people most of the time, and fewer than 10 joined Circle as part of the acquisition. I really enjoyed every one of the daily standups we had. As it seems I keep working a lot with BD people, I‘d like to express my respect to our European Business Director, Kat Daminova.
We were driving EEA Go-to-market together, and as a result of this motion, we put together a panel between Binance, Coinshares, 21shares, and Hashnote, represented by Kat. Super interesting convo that went on for 1 hour straight. Watch the highlights here.
The photo is from the last standup call at Hashnote. The next day, we started at Circle. It was an immense pleasure, you guys!
LFG 🚀🚀🚀
P.S. One last Op-Ed piece I really enjoyed working on with Leo Mizuhara. After I worked this bite :
👉👉👉 Hashnote on BattleFin Miami 2024 - Stop Tokenizing Dumb S..t!
into our positioning (again adding depth to the brand perception), I knew the idea had more to it, so I reached out to the Blockworks team (sadly, people who helped me out back in the day were let go with the recent cut), and we got it published because it was just that good. Leo wrote it over the weekend.
Check it out, it talks about bringing real value and is definitely worth reading just for its pure non-mainstream way of thought. 👇👇👇