HadickM

Every conversation I have with a builder around the stablecoin + RWA space today revolves around how to own the end customer. There is very little belief that there is defensibility in infrastructure businesses anymore. Always the same concern whether its someone working on a blockchain, a wallet, issuing, orchestrating, or anything in between.

Seems clear that the whole value chain is being compressed and whoever has the best wedge product(s) and GTM will win.

Incredible how well @Polymarket has continued to execute and just how far ahead they are of their competitors.

Over $1bn in volume in May, largest of any month before last October. Trending to do more vol in '25 than '24. 10x the size of their closest pure play competitor. Just announced the X deal which will accelerate growth. One of the most valuable consumer brands period - crypto or not.

So who’s going to do for broad tokenized assets what Stripe is doing for stablecoins in payments?

Robinhood or Revolut maybe first to switch to distributing other tokenized assets?

Someone else?

Under appreciated point wrt to stablecoin adoption is that the most underserved, largest, and fastest growing market today is the EM SMB market, not retail global south.

Nubank called out how this segment has surprised them a few weeks ago - over 5mm accounts in Brazil with no investment or marketing.

In the report we did with @artemis and @CastleIslandVC we showed that B2B cross-border payments was the fastest growing payments use case.

Stripe/Bridge launched their stablecoin Financial Accounts aimed at this segment.

Access to US dollar financial services will only accelerate the growing trend of entrepreneurship in this economies - likely the biggest near term opportunity for any new stablecoin powered biz is solving problems for this segment.

Payoneer earned $257mm of interest income on $7bn of customer deposits instead of paying any of that back to their largely SMB customers.

Imagine if that interest could be programmatically paid to the SMBs utilizing stables/tokenized MMFs. What type of stimulus that would have on local job creation and GDP in those markets EMs that are relying on that business?

Stablecoins and tokenized assets will bring a boom to EM SMBs in a wave we haven't seen since smart phones.

This is such a wild chart - back at the turn of the year I predicted it would be consistently 20% this year, but seems possible @HyperliquidX has shown us a path to surpassing that number.

And yet I still talk to crypto investors who are bearish DeFi.

Incredible - CRCL is indicating an open up 18% and yet COIN up only 2.5% - implying the rest of the business is worth close to 2x net revs

Coincidentally, I have gotten more calls from non-crypto investors across stages this past week then in the 3 years prior, all asking about how to get stablecoin exposure

Just an absolutely humongous win for @jerallaire and the whole @circle team - not to mention the broader industry. Congratulations to everyone involved.

At money 2020 this week and you can feel it in every conversation, everyone knows stablecoins are inevitable.

Some nice coverage of the @artemis, @dragonfly_xyz, and @CastleIslandVC report from last week in Bloomberg today from @Suvajourno

Sony is going to issue there own stablecoin (and so will everyone else, unfortunately)

(s/o @ElBarto_Crypto)

Artemis released the most comprehensive report on stablecoin payments usage to date. We at @dragonfly_xyz supported the @artemis team in compiling research and insights for the report. A few of the most exciting key takeaways for us:

We are again getting to that time of the FinTech/Crypto investing cycle where people mistake financial prod/trading companies for technology companies

Both can be great investments, but you're going to exit them at vastly different multiples (so your entry multiple matters)

Even my wife who works in private equity is surprised by the recent ETH turnaround

Founders - if you're going to do pre deposit vaults (with private LP agreements), make sure you have something waiting for those depositors on the other side. Time and again this is the story.

With the admin continuing its retreat on tariffs, that will bring the market focus back to the strong idiosyncratic setup, which is extremely positive - especially for the collapsing barrier between CeFi/Defi cap markets and stables - we've recently seen

- Robinhood launching their own settlement layer on-chain

- Stripe launching USD stablecoin accounts globally

- Kraken and Bybit launching equities trading

- Meta doing a stablecoin

- @MorphoLabs launching their Apollo/Securitize/Gauntlet levered ACRED strategy, as well passing over $200mm borrowed through Coinbase smart wallet since inception 3 months ago

- Coming launch of @convergeonchain with @ethena_labs and @Securitize to bring a tailor settlement layer that will bring RWA/CeFi/DeFi venues together

- @OstiumLabs explosion the past month on perps for commodities / indices / and now mag7 equities with over $6bn of volume since liberation day

- @superstatefunds launching primary issuance for equities on Solana

- Stablecoin mentions in earnings calls skyrocketing (Marqeta, SoFi, Visa, BNY Mellon, ACI, Mastercard and we aren't over)

And i'm sure i've missed some. But the velocity of these stories is only accelerating. The collapsing of defi/cefi with stablecoins at the center is THE story of the year in crypto. And there's never been a better time to invest or build at this intersection.

With the admin continuing its retreat on tariffs, that will bring the market focus back to the strong idiosyncratic setup, which is extremely positive - especially for the collapsing barrier between CeFi/Defi cap markets and stables - as a reminder we've recently had:

- Robinhood launching their own settlement layer on-chain

- Stripe launching USD stablecoin accounts globally

- Kraken and Bybit launching equities trading

- Meta doing a stablecoin

- @MorphoLabs launching their Apollo/Securitize/Gauntlet levered ACRED strategy, as well passing over $200mm borrowed through Coinbase smart wallet since inception 3 months ago

- Coming launch of @convergeonchain with @ethena_labs and @Securitize to bring a tailor settlement layer that will bring RWA/CeFi/DeFi venues together

- @OstiumLabs explosion the past month on perps for commodities / indices / and now mag7 equities with over $6bn of volume since liberation day

- @superstatefunds launching primary issuance for equities on Solana

- Stablecoin mentions in earnings calls skyrocketing (Marqeta, SoFi, Visa, BNY Mellon, ACI, Mastercard and we aren't over)

And i'm sure i've missed some. But the velocity of these stories is only accelerating. The collapsing of defi/cefi with stablecoins at the center is THE story of the year in crypto. And there's never been a better time to invest or build at this intersection.

Three weeks away from @thestablecon - catch me, @nic__carter, @SamBroner and @matt_homer chat about what the most active stablecoin VCs are looking for in new investment opportunities