📝118: MoonPay vs. Stripe

MoonPay acquires Iron. VanEck files for Avax ETF. MEXC invests in stablecoins. Ripple is now regulated in UAE. Estée Lauder's AI strategy. Victoria's Secret launches Digital Product Passports.

👋 Hey, it’s Marc.

Then: This week saw major bets on Bitcoin and stablecoins. U.S. Fed now sees Bitcoin as a 'hard reserve asset.' Rumble bought $17M in Bitcoin as part of its treasury strategy. Meanwhile, MEXC Ventures invested in Ethena, acquiring $16M in ENA and $20M in USDe. Ripple acquired the DFSA license in UAE. And MoonPay doubled down on infrastructure, acquiring Iron to expand its stablecoin capabilities.

Takeaway: Crypto is becoming a core part of institutional strategy.

“I could potentially see Bitcoin to become the 21st century gold. If Bitcoin is sometimes called “digital gold”, Ethereum would then be the “digital silver”!”

— Marion Laboure, Analyst at Deutsche Bank Research

This week’s question:

📚 Our Top Reads This Week

• The Top 100 GenAI Apps. A16Z. Link

• Distributed Rebellion: A thesis on crypto x AI. Delphi Labs. Link

• Is Bitcoin the 21st century gold? Deutsche Bank. Link

• Is the Metaverse Dead? Glassnode. Link

• Seven Canonical Tokens, Defined. a16z crypto. Link

• Crypto x AI Investment Thesis 2025. Cyber Fund. Link

• Consumer AI on DePAI/ Robotics. Sandra. Link

🚨RSVP for our upcoming webinar

Join our next panel on “Reinventing Ticketing: How Blockchain is Unlocking New Revenue, Security and Fan Loyalty” on 17th March, 12PM EST.

Seats are limited—reserve your spot now & receive an early copy of our upcoming report.

MoonPay Is Coming For Stripe

MoonPay acquired Iron, an API-first stablecoin infrastructure platform, in a nine-digit deal (>$100'000M). [Announcement]

The goal? Expand MoonPay's enterprise offering with stablecoin payments.

What you should know: With 30M users, MoonPay now delivers a complete financial infrastructure with stablecoin payments, treasury management, and 24/7 transactions.

• Founded in January 2024 in Berlin, Iron streamlines stablecoin integration with APIs for treasury automation and real-time cross-border payouts.

• This is the second biggest acquisition of MoonPay after Helio Pay.

Why it matters: MoonPay’s acquisition of Iron strengthens its Helio Pay acquisition, enabling businesses to streamline cross-border transactions, manage multi-currency treasuries, and integrate yield-bearing assets. It also positions MoonPay as a programmable payment solution against Stripe, offering enterprise-grade stablecoin solutions.

Be smart: Stripe just dropped $1.1B on Bridge Network to build stablecoin payments. MoonPay just bought the infrastructure to do the same.

By the data: The global cross-border payments market is projected to exceed $290T by 2030.

• Stablecoins are now valued at $235.7B —surpassing Ethereum's $226.3B—with Tether making up $143.3B.

What they’re saying:

“We think everyone is going to have a digital currency wallet, whether it’s inside of a bank account or independently. And we build a backwards compatibility to the existing financial system.”

— Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay Co-Founder and CEO

Meanwhile: Stripe is not stopping.

“With respect to Stablecoins, simply putting in place a clear framework with prudent rules for the road will do a tremendous amount of good."

— Patrick Collison, Content Strategist, Stripe

Our take: As both crypto-native innovators and traditional fintech players move to integrate stablecoins, expect increased M&A activity in the sector.

51: Grow, compete, and win with our end-to-end growth engine:

• 80K+ B2B business leaders & direct corporate access to get in front of decision-makers.

• Institutional-grade research campaigns with BD execution

• Sales enablement & market intelligence to close enterprise deals faster.

Clients include: Avalanche, MoonPay, Near Foundation, and others.

MCP: USB-C for AI

If you’ve been following AI agents, you’ve probably heard the buzz about MCP—and for good reason.

Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024. Now, usage is exploding.

Why it’s important: Right now, AI systems are like walled gardens. Every time you want to connect an AI agent to a database, CRM, or financial system, you need custom integrations, one-off APIs, and a ton of engineering work.

Be smart: MCP is an open standard from Anthropic that allows AI systems to seamlessly connect to business data, cloud tools, and enterprise systems—without endless custom integrations. Think of it as a "USB-C for AI". [Github]

Why is MCP Winning? MCP is built specifically for AI systems (with AI agents in mind). It's open-source and backed by Anthropic. Plus, it’s based on a familiar standard, making it easy for developers to adopt and integrate.

Punchline: AI agents are only as good as the data they can access. MCP is quickly becoming the standard for making AI actually useful in business.

🚨 Other Highlights You Can’t Miss

• Ripple secures UAE license for crypto payments. Link

• BNY expands its partnership with Circle. Link

• Victoria’s Secret launched Digital Product Passports. Link

• VanEck Files for Industry-First Avalanche ETF. Link

• Google co-founder Larry Page’s new AI startup, Dynatomics. Link

• Estee Lauder partners with Microsoft for AI prediction & personalization. Link

• Google’s new releases on AI-powered shopping experience. Link

👉 Keep up with all our signals for Web3 execs on our Telegram channel.

💰 Money Moves

• Captain Tsubasa: Web3 game developer raised $700M led by X&KSK. Link

• Mesh: Crypto payment network raised $82M Series B led by Paradigm. Link

• DoubleZero: Web3 infrastructure company raised $28M co-led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly. Link

• Ethena: Stablecoin company raised $16M led by MEXC Ventures. Link

• Validation Cloud: Web3 infrastructure platform raised $15M Series A led by True Global Ventures. Link

• August: Web3 infrastructure startup raised $10M led by Dragonfly Ventures. Link

That’s all for now, folks.

Talk soon,

– Marc & Team

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