Cantor Fitzgerald, Tether and SoftBank are launching Twenty One Capital — a $3.6B bitcoin buying machine far more ambitious than Microstrategy. This means:
This is a quiet revolution of capital markets.
Then: Hidden Road (recently acquired by Ripple) secured approval from FINRA to operate as a broker-dealer. Paypal dropped the 𝗣𝗮𝘆𝗣𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗸𝗶𝘁 — a full-blown suite to plug their APIs.
And, Bitcoin just became the world’s 5th most valuable asset, surpassing Alphabet with a $1.87T market cap:
“Bitcoin has a dual role as both a tech-correlated asset and a safeguard against private and public sector financial disruptions. It is regaining attention as a hedge against systemic risk as the concerns mount over the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve.”
— Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered‘s Global Head of Digital Assets Research
Circle will debut its Circle Payments Network (CPN) in May. [Announcement]
The goal? To enable real-time cross-border payments for financial institutions using USDC, EURC, and other regulated stablecoins.
Why it matters: Cross-border payments are slow and costly—up to 6.65% in fees with multi-day delays. Circle’s CPN offers a faster, cheaper alternative by linking USDC and EURC to banks and real-time rails. It unlocks use cases like payroll and treasury, and positions stablecoins as next-gen payment infrastructure—putting pressure on SWIFT to evolve.
