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Visa and Brale Test Privacy-Enabled SBC Stablecoin Settlement on Canton Network

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Visa and Brale Test Privacy-Enabled SBC Stablecoin Settlement on Canton Network

Visa and stablecoin issuer Brale are piloting settlement using SBC, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, on Canton Network, the privacy-preserving institutional DLT, testing whether blockchain settlement can meet bank-grade compliance requirements.

Visa and stablecoin infrastructure company Brale are piloting settlement using SBC, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Brale, on the Canton Network — the permissioned-but-privacy-preserving blockchain built by Digital Asset for regulated financial institutions. The two companies announced the collaboration on Wednesday, framing it as a test of whether blockchain-based settlement can satisfy the privacy and compliance standards that banks require.

SBC is fully backed by cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. government bonds, with monthly reserve attestations from a third-party accounting firm. Its circulating supply stands at $8.99 million across 11 chains, per DefiLlama — reflecting a pilot-stage instrument, not a scaled issuance.

The proof of concept sits inside a larger stablecoin push at Visa. The company’s stablecoin settlement pilot now spans nine blockchains and has reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% quarter over quarter, Visa said in April. Canton was among the five blockchains Visa added at that point.

The Privacy Architecture Argument

The Canton Network, launched by Digital Asset in 2023 and now backed by more than 30 financial institutions, is designed to let participants transact on shared infrastructure without exposing sensitive transaction data to other network members. That configurability, rather than raw throughput or cost, is Canton’s institutional sales pitch.

“Stablecoin settlement has shown how blockchain infrastructure can improve the speed and efficiency of money movement,” said Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, in the company’s press release. “Through our work with Brale, we’re exploring how SBC on the Canton Network can support institutional settlement use cases that require both programmability and privacy controls.”

Ben Milne, founder and CEO of Brale, said financial institutions are “increasingly looking for stablecoin infrastructure that meets their operational, regulatory, and privacy requirements.”

SBC is natively issued on Canton, which avoids the bridging mechanics that introduce settlement risk on networks where the stablecoin wasn’t designed to originate.

Canton’s Institutional Rail Thesis

Canton’s TVL stands at roughly $961,000 as of June 4, per DefiLlama, a nascent onchain footprint that understates its institutional deployment, since much of the activity on permissioned settlement networks does not register in standard TVL calculations. The chain’s measured TVL has risen 207% since mid-May, an early signal of growing operational usage.

The network has been accumulating institutional participants. JPMorgan’s Kinexys unit announced in January that it plans to issue JPM Coin (JPMD), its USD deposit token, natively on Canton across a phased rollout. DTCC and Digital Asset are separately working to make U.S. Treasuries available on Canton. HSBC completed a tokenized deposit pilot on the network in April. And Digital Asset itself is reportedly targeting a $2 billion valuation in a $300 million raise led by a16z crypto.

Institutional Permissioned Settlement

The Canton model competes and sometimes overlaps with other institutional blockchain settlement efforts. JPMorgan’s Kinexys (formerly Onyx) has processed billions in interbank settlement through its permissioned ledger since 2020. Fnality, a consortium-owned utility backed by a group of global banks including Santander and Goldman Sachs, is working toward wholesale payment settlement using tokenized central bank money.

The Visa-Brale pairing differs in one respect: Brale is a third-party stablecoin issuer, not a bank, and Visa is a card network running settlement obligations through the instrument, not a direct bank-to-bank transfer. That positions the collaboration closer to a payment-network layer than to a wholesale interbank settlement system.

Pilot Scope and Open Questions

The announcement does not disclose settlement volumes, currencies other than USD, or named counterparties beyond Visa and Brale. No timeline for moving from proof of concept to production is given. Visa described the exercise as evaluating “what it takes to bring these capabilities into production environments.”

SBC can be minted and redeemed 1:1 with USDC, USDP, and PYUSD on 10-plus blockchains, and via wire and ACH, according to Brale’s documentation. That interoperability means any settlement balances built up on Canton could theoretically flow back to the broader stablecoin ecosystem, a design consideration for institutions that don’t want liquidity trapped on a single network.

Why quantitative traders are using complex math models to hijack your weekend sports bets

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Why quantitative traders are using complex math models to hijack your weekend sports bets

Chicago-based trading giant DRW has spent decades profiting from mismatches between different asset classes, and now it’s building a dedicated prediction market desk targeting platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi.

The move is one of the clearest signs yet that sophisticated “quantitative trading” firms — traders that use complex math and analysis to set up strategies — are increasingly viewing prediction markets as a legitimate trading venue rather than a niche betting product.

The firm that has been a dominant force in derivatives, fixed income and crypto markets since 1992, recently posted a job listing requiring candidates to monitor prices in real time across both platforms simultaneously, identify gaps where one is mispricing an outcome relative to the other and react quickly to profit before the pricing converges. The strategies listed in these posts — including microstructure arbitrage, cross-platform arbitrage, and news-driven momentum trading at sub-second speeds — are techniques honed in crypto derivatives markets and now being applied to sports and political events.

DRW is not alone. Wintermute, the algorithmic market maker that processes billions in daily crypto volume, is hiring algorithmic traders with experience in prediction markets. IMC, another proprietary trading firm, is also looking for quantitative traders comfortable operating across binary event contracts. Meanwhile, traditional crypto exchanges like OKX and Crypto.com have also recently posted job listings.

The hiring wave suggests institutional trading firms increasingly believe prediction markets have matured into a serious asset class and are ripe for profit.

Exploiting the mismatch

So what’s driving the sudden push? The catalyst is the volume being traded on these platforms.

Polymarket alone processed between $22 billion and $40 billion across political, economic and sports markets in 2025, up from virtually nothing three years ago and a growing share of that is concentrated in sports.

As of last week, Polymarket’s market on the UEFA Champions League Winner has processed $256 million, the 2026 NBA Champion market has done $399 million, and the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup market sits at $79 million after wild swings that saw Carolina Hurricanes rise from sub-10% implied probability to around 50% as they emerged from the Eastern Conference.

Combined, those three markets alone represent over $730 million in volume on sports outcomes, approaching the annual trading volume of some mid-sized European sports betting exchanges.

But the real reason traditional firms are pushing into this industry may not be to predict outcomes better than everyone else, market observers say.

“I don’t expect the institutional capital is contributing meaningfully to the accuracy of these markets, especially in the case of sports,” said Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University who studies prediction market calibration.

“The accuracy of the markets is driven by specialized sports betting groups, which are much sharper at pricing sports outcomes.

Instead, Crane argues, firms such as DRW are likely applying trading techniques developed in traditional financial markets to exploit pricing mismatch.

“To the extent they are profitable, the institutions are likely applying techniques on short-term market dynamics and other technical aspects of trading that capitalize on short-term market fluctuations without insight into the event outcome.”

Simply put, DRW is not trying to predict who wins the Champions League. It is trying to profit from the way prices move before that question is answered.

A recent example appeared in the market for Britain’s next prime minister.

On the morning of May 14, Andy Burnham’s odds of becoming the next U.K. leader in the betting of “Next UK Prime Minister” on Polymarket surged from 24 cents to 43 cents as political speculation intensified around a potential Labour leadership challenge. But Betfair, the London-based betting exchange with over a billion pounds in annual volume, had already identified the move, pricing Burnham at the equivalent of 50 cents while Polymarket still showed 24 cents.

It took Polymarket hours to catch up.

For casual bettors, the gap was an interesting anomaly, but to a sophisticated quant trader, it was a textbook cross-market inefficiency waiting to be exploited.

In theory, a trader could have bought $10,000 of Burnham contracts on Polymarket at 24 cents after noticing the mismatch, before locking in $7,900 worth of profit in a matter of hours by selling when it caught up to Betfair, which would have made a profit without the event even needing to take place.

It’s a technique that has been used for decades by traditional trading firms: finding a mispriced asset across exchanges and either simultaneously buying/selling, as in arbitrage, or buying the underpriced asset and waiting for it to catch up.

Prediction markets, however, introduce an additional challenge. Betfair settles in sterling while Polymarket settles in crypto, requiring infrastructure capable of moving capital across currencies, exchanges and settlement systems.

That kind of complexity plays directly into the strengths of large trading firms, such as DRW

What’s driving them?

Beyond outright arbitrage, traders point to two structural features that make prediction markets attractive today.

The first is information lag. Traditional betting exchanges often react more quickly than decentralized prediction platforms, creating windows where prices have not yet fully adjusted.

The second is liquidity fragmentation. Champions League, NBA and Stanley Cup markets can trade simultaneously across Polymarket, Kalshi and traditional sportsbooks, meaning no single venue necessarily reflects the full market consensus.

For traders focused on forecasting outcomes rather than market structure, the toolkit looks increasingly familiar to quantitative finance.

Soccer traders often rely on “Dixon-Coles Poisson” models. The toolkit, developed in a 1997 academic paper, estimates team attack and defense strength and generates probability distributions for potential scorelines. This is something similar to how a weather forecaster assigns precise probabilities to every possible outcome rather than making a single prediction.

Meanwhile, Basketball traders frequently use “Bayesian Hierarchical” models that update assessments of team strength as new information arrives.

The goal for both models is to identify discrepancies between a model’s estimated probability and the probability implied by market prices.

A trader whose model values Arsenal’s Champions League chances at 47% while contracts trade at 43 cents may buy and profit if the market eventually converges toward that estimate.

The concept is known as closing line value, or CLV.

Crane explains why the CLV matters: “It incorporates all known pre-game information, such as injuries and lineup changes, and the sharpest players tend to wait until closer to game time to place bets because that is when the limits tend to be highest.”

Competition is here

Still, Crane remains skeptical that institutional firms will dominate sports prediction markets simply because they have arrived with larger balance sheets.

“Right now, the sharpest players in the sports betting markets are not the institutions,” he said. “The sharpest players have been in these markets for decades, and the prevailing market prices are likely driven by the same groups and the same information sources since long before prediction markets existed.”

Despite the skepticism, the talent migration is already underway.

Crypto market makers are studying sports analytics and expected-goals models, while traditional sports betting specialists are increasingly being recruited by crypto firms seeking expertise that took years to develop.

And it’s not just theoretical.

HyperLiquid, the onchain perpetuals exchange that processed over $10 billion in daily volume at its peak, is already preparing to launch prediction markets ahead of the 2026 World Cup, featuring 64 games over six weeks and generating thousands of correlated binary outcomes.

The infrastructure is being built, and the desks are now being staffed, with models working on potential outcomes.

The main question is whether institutions can outperform veteran sports bettors by finding their edge and applying sophisticated trading models used in traditional finance. But on latency, market structure and cross-platform inefficiencies, the competition has already begun.

Read more: Hyperliquid is emerging as a challenger to traditional exchanges and prediction markets, says FalconX

The battle for digital dollars is moving onchain

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The battle for digital dollars is moving onchain

America’s largest banks are preparing a direct response to one of crypto’s fastest-growing products: stablecoins.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and other major lenders said Friday that they plan to launch a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House by the first half of 2027. The project would allow bank deposits to move across blockchain infrastructure with round-the-clock settlement, giving traditional bank money some of the same capabilities that have helped stablecoins gain traction.

The move highlights the growing competition to become the preferred form of cash on blockchain networks.

“Following the GENIUS Act, a competition seems to be emerging between stablecoins, tokenized deposits and tokenized money market funds to become the preferred onchain cash instrument,” said Reid Noch, vice president of U.S. equity market structure at TD Securities.

Stablecoins, specifically Circle’s (CRCL) USDC and Tether’s USDT, currently dominate that market. The dollar-pegged tokens are widely used for crypto trading, cross-border payments and increasingly for savings products. But banks are concerned that if stablecoins become mainstream, deposits could migrate from traditional accounts into crypto wallets.

Tokenized deposits allow banks to bring customers onchain without losing control of their deposits. A customer’s bank deposit would be represented as a digital token that can move across blockchain rails. Unlike stablecoins, the funds would remain inside the banking system.

Noch said tokenized deposits address long-standing inefficiencies in global payments.

“Anyone who has ever wired money, especially internationally, knows the process can be expensive and often takes one or two business days to complete,” said Noch. By using blockchain infrastructure, tokenized deposits could allow near-instant transfers around the clock while reducing costs and settlement frictions, he said.

The initiative also signals how far blockchain technology has moved into the financial mainstream.

“The biggest banks in America are voluntarily coming onchain,” said Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone. “When the country’s largest institutions decide the future of finance runs on blockchain, they’re proving exactly what our industry has been building toward all along.”

Significant competition

Still, the banking industry’s approach differs sharply from crypto’s vision of open networks.

Noelle Acheson, author of “Crypto is Macro Now,” noted that banks have spent years experimenting with private blockchain systems that move money internally while maintaining strict control over users and transactions. The planned Clearing House network expands that model across multiple banks but remains far removed from public blockchain ecosystems where stablecoins circulate freely.

Acheson argued that the project demonstrates that banks are taking stablecoins seriously despite public comments from some executives, including JPM CEO Jamie Dimon, who downplayed the threat. While stablecoins offer greater liquidity and flexibility, she said many corporate customers may prefer a bank-backed system that fits within existing compliance frameworks.

In a report in March, Jeffries said it estimates that stablecoins could drive a 3% to 5% runoff in core deposits over the next five years and shrink average bank earnings by about 3%.

The outcome could reshape how money moves on blockchain networks.

If successful, the Clearing House initiative could emerge as a significant competitor to stablecoins for corporate payments and treasury operations. At the same time, it underscores a broader trend: traditional finance is increasingly adopting blockchain technology, even as it competes with crypto-native alternatives built on the same infrastructure.

Billion-dollar crypto investor doubles down on bitcoin, questions Ethereum’s upside

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Billion-dollar crypto investor doubles down on bitcoin, questions Ethereum’s upside

James Wo, the founder and chief executive of crypto investment firm DFG, says bitcoin remains the dominant institutional asset in crypto — and ether is unlikely to reach the same status anytime soon.

Speaking to CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, Wo rejected Bitmine Immersion Technologies Chairman Tom Lee’s big prediction that ether would hit $250,000, arguing that Ethereum lacks the same consensus and institutional recognition that have formed around bitcoin.

“I totally disagree with him,” Wo said.

“Bitcoin has a very strong consensus. If you talk to everyone who is an early backer… they believe in bitcoin. Now, beyond the early backing of bitcoin, all the people in crypto, and also traditional finance people, are trying to recognize bitcoin as a safe haven or asset class. I don’t think Ethereum is there yet.”

Ether was trading around $1,775 as of time of writing, while bitcoin was near $63,000.

Wo argued that ether’s fundamental valuation remains heavily dependent on the localized application layer running directly on top of the network to capture fee value. With modern Layer-2 networks now diverting transactional volume and capturing fee utility independently, Wo explains that the network’s value accrual has been structurally different.

“The value of ether has been more diversified or decentralized,” Wo noted.

“The Ethereum token as a whole is not going to capture a lot of value. Onchain activity is not as big as people expected… I don’t think Ethereum will even hit an all-time high. I think bitcoin will perform well, but not Ethereum,” he claimed.

Not everyone agrees that Ethereum’s value accrual problem is permanent, however.

In February, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reignited debate within the community after suggesting that Layer-2 networks, which have long been seen as the primary scaling solution, may “no longer make sense” as Ethereum becomes faster and cheaper. The discussion reflects broader questions about whether future upgrades could allow more economic activity to accrue directly to the Ethereum base layer.

‘What is bitcoin?’

Wo’s view, however, reflects the perspective of an investor who has spent more than a decade deploying capital across digital assets, that started with bitcoin.

After studying mathematics at university, Wo began watching classmates trade bitcoin during the 2014 bear market. He later entered the sector with $20 million in initial capital from his mother, who, at the time, managed an established enterprise and private equity firm in China.

“At the beginning, I don’t think she trusted me,” Wo recalled. “What is bitcoin? She has no idea.” But she gave him the money regardless and said, “Okay, so I’m going to support you anyway.”

He deployed that initial capital into bitcoin during the market lows of late 2014 and 2015. As the 2016 bull market developed, he diversified DFG’s balance sheet into alternative layer-1 protocols, becoming an early venture participant in ecosystems including Solana, Polkadot and Near.

He also directed early-stage corporate investments into consumer applications and Web3 infrastructure, including an early $10 million allocation into Circle’s USDC stablecoin project in January 2018.

Those investments helped transform DFG from a bitcoin-focused investment vehicle into one of crypto’s larger venture investors. Today, the firm manages more than 100 portfolio entities with over $1 billion in total assets under management.

Bitcoin’s new all-time high

While Wo remains cautious on ether, his multi-year outlook for bitcoin is constructive. He frames the asset as a superior liquid investment compared with regional real estate and traditional equity markets.

“I firmly believe this is going to outperform the Chinese stock market and also the U.S. stock market,” Wo stated. “Bitcoin in any aspect you can think of from the investment angle—liquidity is the best in the world.”

Wo expects bitcoin could undergo a near-term correction before reaching new highs later in the cycle.

“If it goes down 50% as a correction… the bottom should be around $60,000 to $62,000,” Wo calculated, adding that only an extreme geopolitical black swan event would push the asset lower.

Looking further out, he expects bitcoin to reach new records in the coming years.

“At the peak, we have somehow like $125,000… I believe we will see an all-time high in 2027 or 2028.”

Satoshi-era BTC at center of $285 billion bitcoin lawsuit moves after 14 years

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Satoshi-era BTC at center of $285 billion bitcoin lawsuit moves after 14 years

A Bitcoin address that had held 35.55 bitcoin worth $2.54 million untouched since March 2011 moved its coins earlier this wee,, becoming one of the first publicly visible responses from a named defendant in a New York state lawsuit that claims legal title over 39,069 dormant bitcoin wallets.

The wallet, 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, sent 15 BTC to a new address and held the remaining 20.55 BTC as change in transaction b90755b at 16:46 UTC on June 2, recorded in Bitcoin block 952,104, per mempool.space data.

The original coins were received on March 27, 2011, when bitcoin traded at less than a dollar.

The lawsuit, filed March 11, 2026 at the New York County Supreme Court under index number 153119/2026 and amended on May 1, names a pseudonymous plaintiff identified only as Noah Doe along with two Wyoming LLCs holding assigned interests, ABC Company and XYZ Company.

The plaintiffs seek legal ownership of roughly 3.8 million bitcoin valued at approximately $285 billion under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, the state’s lost-property statute, with Noah Doe positioned as a “finder” under abandoned-property doctrine.

The court authorized on-chain service of the defendants through OP_RETURN messages, a Bitcoin transaction field that lets users embed short text or URLs permanently on the blockchain.

Noah Doe’s blockchain consultant, Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors, broadcast 98 batches of dust transactions across Bitcoin blocks 950,446 to 950,576 in June and July 2025, each carrying 546 satoshis and a link to the abandonment notice. The 1LwWt wallet was served on July 31, 2025, with a 90-day window to respond.

Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn flagged the move on X Tuesday morning, identifying the wallet as the firm’s tracked Noah Doe defendant #38215. “Apparently, they were not, in fact, abandoned,” Thorn wrote.

The move came nearly seven months after the 90-day response window expired and roughly three months after the lawsuit was formally filed. Per Galaxy’s analysis, hundreds of wallets moved coins during the original notice campaign and were excluded from the final defendant list.

The 1LwWt move, occurring after the lawsuit was already underway with the wallet named as a defendant, is among the first publicly visible responses from inside the active case.

Meanwhile, a separate 15-year-dormant wallet, 1CDSyXAQxro4FPUoqAQb81642ruqDsUiNp, moved 20 BTC ($1.48 million) to a SegWit address approximately 13 hours before the 1LwWt move, per Arkham Intelligence data. The 1CDSy wallet received its original coins around the same 2011 window but does not appear to have been targeted by the Noah Doe notice campaign or named in the lawsuit.

The movements come during a sharp bitcoin slide that has taken BTC to near $70,000 for the first time in weeks, with Strategy’s first publicized bitcoin sale, a record 10-session spot ETF outflow streak, and stalled U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks all weighing on the market.

Satoshi-era coins were acquired before bitcoin had a meaningful dollar price, meaning any sale at current levels would mark a near-infinite gain on cost basis.

Bitcoin Sellers Face ‘Exhaustion’ as They try to Force BTC Below $60,000

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Bitcoin Sellers Face ‘Exhaustion’ as They try to Force BTC Below $60,000

Bitcoin (BTC) extended losses after Friday’s Wall Street open as traders prepared for a retest of $60,000.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin begins a battle to protect $60,000 support as sell-side pressure refuses to cool.
  • Analysis sees early signals that “seller exhaustion” is here.
  • US nonfarm payrolls data produce a stronger-than-expected picture of US labor market conditions.

Bitcoin battles for $60,000 support

Data from TradingView showed daily BTC price downside approaching 5% as sellers stayed in the driving seat.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

“Rapidly approaching its February low at $60K. Now in its 6th red daily candle and down more than the entire April/May rally,” trader Daan Crypto Trades noted in a reaction on X. 

“Really was a case of stairs up elevator down which is something we often see in these larger bear trends. Eyes on that $60K area for now.”

BTC/USDT perpetual contract one-day chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X

Commentator Expitump referenced the Coinbase Premium, the difference in price between Coinbase’s BTC/USD and Binance’s BTC/USDT pairs and a key yardstick for US demand.

“Price is still under controlled selling, but seeing funding getting almost into negative and coinbase discount decreasing,” they summarized in their latest market coverage. 

“Early signs of seller exhaustion.”

Binance Bitcoin futures 30-minute chart with order-book data. Source: Exitpump/X

Trader Morin said that BTC/USD was now “frontrunning a key range low” with the key $60,000 mark in sight.

“Swept 61.3k internal low but failed to make higher high. Consistent lower highs -> Sellers in Control,” he told X followers. 

“Wouldn’t be surprised to see 60s traded or even ran through.”

BTC/USD 30-minute chart. Source: Morin/X

risk assets
Nonfarm payrolls further reduce Fed rate-cut odds

Crypto bulls were not helped by macro data, with US nonfarm payrolls considerably outpacing expectations to suggest a stronger labor market. 

Related: Bitcoin needs one more thing to happen to spark BTC price ‘rally:’ Analysis

The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than double the anticipated 85,000.

“April’s jobs number was also revised UP by +64,000 jobs. This marks the second strongest US jobs report in 13 months,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter responded.

Fed target rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: CME Group

Higher jobs numbers notionally reduce the need for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and provide crypto and risk assets with a liquidity tailwind. Data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed markets pricing in a rate hike before the end of the year.

Commenting, trading resource Mosaic Asset Company argued that strong labor-market data would in fact complicate the Fed’s task.

“If the payrolls report for the month of May confirms underlying strength in the economy and labor market, the outlook for monetary policy will grow more uncertain given the recent jump in consumer and producer inflation,” it wrote previously in its latest Mosaic Chart Alerts update. 

“At the same time, evidence of solid economic activity is helping the average stock catch up to the gains in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.”

Western Union Deploys USDPT on Bybit’s Fiat Channels in Latin America

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Western Union Deploys USDPT on Bybit’s Fiat Channels in Latin America

Western Union has made its USDPT stablecoin available on Bybit’s fiat channels in Latin America, making Bybit the first major crypto exchange to integrate USDPT — arriving two days after MoneyGram launched its own rival dollar token on Stellar.

Western Union has made its USDPT stablecoin available on Bybit’s fiat channels in Latin America, the two companies announced Thursday.

Bybit, which describes itself as the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume with over 80 million users, is the first major crypto exchange to integrate USDPT.

Through the integration, users in selected Latin American markets can buy USDPT with local fiat currencies on Bybit, or convert holdings back to local currency at any time. The time from purchase to fiat off-ramp drops from days to minutes, per the joint announcement.

The move extends Western Union’s digital-asset strategy beyond its own agent network. Western Union launched USDPT on Solana on May 4, positioning it as a 24/7 settlement layer across a payments network spanning more than 200 countries and territories.

Remittance Giants Racing to Own the Stablecoin Rail

The Bybit integration arrives as Western Union’s direct competitors move onto the same rails. MoneyGram launched MGUSD on Stellar on June 2, two days before Thursday’s announcement. MGUSD is issued by Stripe-owned Bridge and targets MoneyGram’s 60 million active customers across nearly 500,000 retail locations.

Stripe’s Bridge also deployed USDB in 2025 for business accounts across 101 countries; Deel used the same stack to pay 1.5 million independent contractors in DLUSD, starting in Latin America.

That makes two legacy remittance incumbents now running proprietary dollar stablecoins on public blockchains within the same week. The pattern is consistent: each operator wants to own the dollar float that previously accrued to Tether or Circle as its corridors moved funds.

USDPT does not yet appear in the top 20 stablecoins by circulating market cap, per DefiLlama. USDT and USDC lead at $187 billion and $76 billion respectively. The remittance-native tokens are competing for corridor volume rather than broad DeFi liquidity at this stage.

USDPT’s Architecture and Issuer

USDPT is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, on the Solana blockchain. It is backed 1:1 by U.S. dollar reserves. Fireblocks powers the agent-settlement capability across Western Union’s distribution network.

“By connecting our global payout infrastructure with a major crypto platform, we’re enabling more seamless movement between digital value and real-world money,” Malcolm Clarke, Head of Digital Assets at Western Union, said in the announcement. “This is where we see the future of settlement heading: always-on, programmable, and integrated across both traditional and digital financial systems.”

For Bybit, the integration positions the exchange as the fiat gateway into Western Union’s stablecoin network. “Bybit and Western Union are setting a new standard for real-world crypto adoption in Latin America,” said Patricio Mesri, Bybit’s Country Manager for Spanish-speaking Latin America.

The LATAM Angle

Latin America is the strategic entry point for both sides. High inflation in Argentina and Venezuela has driven demand for dollar-denominated digital balances among consumers who can access stablecoins on exchange fiat ramps. Mexico is the world’s second-largest remittance-receiving country by dollar volume, with the U.S.–Mexico corridor processing tens of billions annually.

Western Union has also disclosed that USDPT will anchor “Stable by Western Union,” a direct consumer spending product set to launch across 40 or more countries in 2026. The Bybit fiat channel is the first named exchange in what Western Union calls its “Global Exchange Support” pillar — one of four USDPT-enabled use cases alongside agent treasury settlement, a Digital Asset Network for licensed custodians, and the consumer spend product.

Michael Saylor unveils Bitcoin’s four tribes as the market tumbles

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Michael Saylor unveils Bitcoin’s four tribes as the market tumbles

Following bitcoin’s worst week in two years, Strategy(MSTR) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor published a framework on X, arguing that the Bitcoin community is evolving into four distinct ideological camps.
Rather than viewing these groups as competitors, he presents them as complementary forces that will collectively shape bitcoin’s future.

The first group, Bitcoin Maximalists, sees Bitcoin as the ultimate monetary breakthrough. They believe bitcoin has already solved the problem of digital scarcity and offers superior property rights, protection from inflation, and economic empowerment. Their focus is conviction: bitcoin is not one crypto asset among many, but the dominant digital monetary network.

The second group, Bitcoin Capitalists, views Bitcoin as a form of digital capital that should be integrated into the global economy. They support corporate treasury adoption, institutional custody, bitcoin-backed securities, lending markets, and broader financial infrastructure. Their goal is to expand bitcoin’s reach by embedding it into existing economic systems rather than replacing them.

The third group, Bitcoin Technologists, focuses on improving the protocol. They argue that Bitcoin must continue to evolve to address challenges in scalability, privacy, usability, security, and future threats such as quantum computing. While they support innovation, Saylor notes that changes to bitcoin’s base layer must be approached cautiously to avoid unintended consequences.

The fourth group, Bitcoin Fundamentalists, prioritize protecting bitcoin’s original principles: decentralization, self-custody, immutability, censorship resistance, and individual sovereignty. They are wary of excessive institutional influence, financialization, and protocol changes that could compromise Bitcoin’s core characteristics.

Saylor’s central argument is that Bitcoin needs all four perspectives. Maximalists provide conviction, Capitalists drive adoption, Technologists ensure long-term resilience, and Fundamentalists safeguard the protocol’s integrity. Saylor argues that Bitcoin’s most successful path lies in a balance among these four forces.

U.S. job growth blows past forecasts, setting stage for Fed rate hikes

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U.S. job growth blows past forecasts, setting stage for Fed rate hikes

The U.S. economy added 172,000 jobs in May, nearly double economists’ expectations, strengthening the case for Federal Reserve rate hikes this year.

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bitcoin BTC$60,972.99 remained under pressure following the report, trading below $62,000 as the broader crypto market nursed steep overnight declines.

The 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.52% following the report. U.S. equity index futures were also lower, the Nasdaq 100 index down 1.2%. Oil prices edged modestly lower at $94 per barrel, while gold slid 1.1% to around $4,400 per ounce.

Recent economic data continue to point to a resilient U.S. economy this week. Both the ISM Manufacturing PMI and ISM Services PMI came in above expectations and remained in expansionary territory.

U.S. equities have had an incredibly strong run, with the S&P 500 about to post gains for 10 consecutive weeks and rising roughly 10% year-to-date. However, some exuberance has faded from the semiconductor sector following Broadcom’s earnings report, which disappointed investors with a weaker-than-expected outlook for AI-related chip demand.

CME CEO Terry Duffy Calls US Crypto Perps ‘a Disaster Waiting to Happen’

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CME CEO Terry Duffy Calls US Crypto Perps ‘a Disaster Waiting to Happen’

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy warned that newly approved US-regulated perpetual futures are “a disaster waiting to happen,” citing excessive leverage and retail risk — a pointed critique from the incumbent US institutional crypto derivatives exchange.

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy publicly warned that newly approved US-regulated perpetual futures contracts are “a disaster waiting to happen,” comparing the current environment to the buildup ahead of the 2008 financial crisis and saying excessive leverage could wipe out retail traders who do not understand the product.

Duffy made the remarks at Piper Sandler’s Global Exchange & Fintech conference on Thursday, June 4, and also appeared on CNBC’s Fast Money on Wednesday to raise similar concerns. “I really believe it’s 2007,” he said. “The housing market has been supplanted by the speculation market, including predictions and everything else, and this could be a disaster waiting to happen.” Bloomberg reported separately that Duffy told the Piper Sandler audience he has “grave concerns” with how the contracts are structured.

Duffy’s Leverage Argument

Duffy’s central objection is leverage and retail exposure. Perpetual futures traded on offshore venues, where the bulk of global crypto derivatives volume sits, can carry leverage of 20x to as high as 250x, far above CME’s roughly 5x margin framework on its regulated crypto products.

He said regulators bypassed the kind of rigorous review that a novel, high-leverage instrument normally receives. “I don’t like to see people that don’t understand products to potentially get blown out of a contract that they shouldn’t be in the first place,” Duffy said, per Bloomberg.

CME Group operates regulated crypto futures that are the dominant US institutional venue. Its bitcoin futures carried open interest of approximately $10 billion across 131,670 BTC contracts as of mid-April 2026, the highest among regulated US venues at the time.

CFTC Action

The CFTC approved Kalshi’s BTCPERP contract on May 29, the first US-regulated bitcoin perpetual futures product, after Kalshi submitted the contract for review on May 28. The agency determined the product complied with the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations. The CFTC also issued a no-action letter to Coinbase Financial Markets allowing US customers to access perps listed on Coinbase’s offshore affiliate.

The Defiant covered the CFTC approval when it was issued. Three days later, Kalshi filed to list perpetual futures on 12 altcoins including ETH, XRP, and SOL. The Defiant reported on that filing as well.

Duffy’s objections carry weight beyond the policy debate. CME has long been the primary gateway for institutional money entering US-regulated crypto derivatives. Bringing perpetual futures onshore, a product dominant in offshore markets, creates a direct rival product class on his home turf.

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