140: Centralized wins

Hey, it’s Marc.

Stripe and Circle are building their blockchain. Bullish went public. Kraken launched its payment product. Across Bullish, Stripe, Circle, Coinbase and Kraken one pattern stands out: centralized digital asset companies are maturing faster and more aggressively than open protocols.

This 12-18 month window post-GENIUS Act is when the winners will lock in their position.

BTC remains the only digital asset with a macro thesis. Everything else will get priced as infrastructure.

We’ve seen this movie before in cloud, mobile and AI.

The same is now happening in crypto.

👉 The Digital Treasury Standard: We are starting another newsletter covering institutional moves and digital asset treasury vehicles: Click here to subscribe.

Also, our highlights this week:

• Stripe builds Tempo, its payment-focused L1 chain

• Circle builds ARC, a stablecoin-native chain

• Binance partners with Mastercard

• Bullish closes ~$13.16B market cap and raises $1.11B through U.S. IPO

And much more.

PS: We're looking for a digital asset / equity researcher to complement the Fiftyone team. Send me an email with your best research, CV & why you.

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Top Boardroom Reads This Week

Digital Assets

• Digital Dollar, Real Yield [WEBINAR] (51)

• Digital Dirham - A Primer on the UAE's Central Bank Digital Currency (CBUAE)

• Blockchains for TradFi: What banks, asset managers, and fintechs should know (a16z)

• The Last Word on Stablecoins and Free Banking (Nic Carter)

• Stablecoins and the Singleness of Money (Omid Malekan)

• Stablecoins v. Credit Cards (Variant)

• The Evolution Of Speculation (Kyle’s Research)

AI

• The open revolution (AI Operator)

• Vibe Coding 101: The No-Code Stack for Modern Founders (The Founders Corner)

• Ultimate AI Design Stack (Design +AI)

• The Rise of Verticalized AI Coworkers (Tanay)

• AI Agents & MCPs Starter Pack (Linas)

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Stripe is quietly building its own blockchain

Stripe goes all in on crypto to build its own blockchain. Its unannounced “Tempo” chain is a payments-focused Layer-1. Paired with its stablecoin startup (Bridge) and wallet infra (Privy), Stripe could control both issuance and the last mile of payments. [NEWS] [ANALYSIS]

So what? If Tempo works, Stripe could route every USD stablecoin payment through its own chain. This means: cutting costs, keeping the data, and locking in the merchants. Earlier this year, Stripe launched stablecoin accounts for businesses in 100+ countries. It also powers stablecoin payments for Shopify’s entire merchant base. With all these moves, it is rebuilding the payments stack for the next decade.

Money Movement 2.0

Circle builds Arc: a Layer-1 for stablecoin finance

Circle introduced Arc, an open Layer-1 blockchain optimized for stablecoin-native apps, FX settlements and capital markets transactions. [BLOG] [ANALYSIS]

So what? Circle knows that the primary issuance business model won't sustain forever. Particularly when rates are going to drop. While USDC issuance grew 90% last year to $61B, Circle posted a $482M loss despite $658M in revenue. This is Circle’s pivoting from 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘚𝘋𝘊 to owning the rails it moves on. Controlling the chain means controlling the economics, the customer relationship, and the data.

👉 We are going to release another flagship report on stablecoins. Want to partner & expose yourself to 200k+ digital asset leaders? Reach out.

Binance bridges cash with Mastercard

Binance now lets European and UK users instantly convert crypto to euros and withdraw to Mastercard debit/credit cards with near-real-time settlement. It enables both “sell-to-card” (crypto → fiat → card) and “withdraw-to-card” (fiat → card), bypassing traditional bank transfer delays. [BLOG]

So what? With ~300M global Binance users and Mastercard’s 150M+ merchant network, the rollout brings crypto off-ramps into the same speed tier as digital wallets like PayPal. Instant, card-based off-ramps make crypto balances spendable at enterprise scale turning them into a working capital source, not just an investment.

Bullish doubles on NYSE debut, hits $13.2B

The Peter Thiel–backed crypto exchange Bullish opened at $90 after pricing its IPO at $37 and raised $ 1.11 billion. It plans to convert a large portion of the raised amount into stablecoins. Unlike Coinbase, Bullish focuses purely on institutional clients, positioning for recurring, less cyclical revenue as corporate treasuries and retirement plans open to digital assets under new U.S. rules. [NEWS]

So what? Public listings give crypto firms fresh capital, a wider investor base, and eventually make executives very rich. More than $400B in crypto-linked stocks trade on U.S. exchanges. It makes it very clear that the path to success with digital assets is through traditional channels.

News Flash

• StablecoinX secures $360M for Nasdaq listing, focuses on Ethena's ENA token accumulation. Link

• Animoca and Provenance to launch Nuva marketplace for tokenized real-world assets. Link

• MetaComp teams up with USDT0 for compliant cross-chain stablecoin payments. Link

• Animoca, Standard Chartered, and HKT form Anchorpoint to seek HK stablecoin license. Link

• S&P Global gives Sky Protocol first-ever DeFi credit rating at B-. Link

• JPMorgan eyes takeover of Apple’s $20B credit card portfolio. Link

• Google introduces Gemma 3 and Gemma 3 QAT. Link

• Paxos reapplies for U.S. national trust bank charter to expand operations. Link

• Super League launched Pei Pei Panda campaign in Fortnite and Roblox. Link

That’s all for now, folks.

Take care

– Marc & Team

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