The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Revolut, a London-based fintech company that offers cryptocurrency trading, intends to issue its own stablecoin, according to four people who have heard about the plan. The company, which snagged a U.K. banking license in July and was valued at $45 billion earlier this year, is said to be quite far along in creating the stablecoin, according to two of the people. Asked about its stablecoin plans, a spokesman for Revolut said the firm wants to expand its crypto offering, taking a compliance-first approach to become a safe harbor for the entire crypto community. “Crypto is a big part of our belief in banking without borders and we have a clear mission to become the safest and most accessible provider of crypto asset services,” the spokesman said in an email. The highly lucrative stablecoin sector, dominated by Tether's USDT with a market cap of about $119 billion, has seen a growing crop of new entrants. Circle’s USDC ranks second, at about a third of the size. Last year, payments service PayPal started issuing a stablecoin, with blockchain firms Ripple aiming to join in the coming weeks and BitGo announcing a planned introduction at Token2049 in Singapore earlier this week. |
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Animoca Brands is hoping to go public soon, but the final decision on the timeline is dependent on a key component, the "market’s status, amongst other" aspects, the Web3 giant’s chairman Yat Siu told CoinDesk in Singapore on Monday. A major investor in the Web3 space, Animoca's plan to go public became known earlier this year but Siu said we had always wanted to do so. A report in June said the location would be either Hong Kong or the Middle East. Siu also appeared to lean toward Hong Kong as a “strong contender” because the company is headquartered in the city, Bloomberg reported. "It takes time," Siu told CoinDesk, indicating that settling in on a specific timeline was difficult owing to the number of factors involved. “We are midway through the audit, which is a critical piece of the IPO (initial public offering) puzzle,” Siu told CoinDesk. |
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BitGo Plans Reward-Bearing USDS Coin |
BitGo plans to introduce a dollar-backed stablecoin next year, differentiating itself in a crowded market by offering rewards to institutions that provide liquidity to the network, the crypto custody firm announced at Token2049 in Singapore. The stablecoin, dubbed USDS, will be backed by short-duration Treasury bills, overnight repos, and cash, like others on the market. It will be what BitGo calls the first open-participation stablecoin. "The main reason for launching USDS is that, while existing stablecoins serve a good function, we see an opportunity to create a more open and fair system that promotes innovation and, most importantly, rewards those who build the network,” CEO Mike Belshe said in an interview with CoinDesk before his keynote at Token2049. “A stablecoin’s true value comes from the people using it, the liquidity they provide, and the access points for interchange." A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset class, such as a fiat currency or gold, to stabilize its price. They are used widely in crypto trading and provide most of the liquidity in decentralized finance (DeFi). |
Dragonfly Aims to Raise $500 Million |
Crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital aims to raise $500 million for its fourth fund, which will target early-stage projects, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. San Francisco-based Dragonfly has already raised $250 million and is looking to double that figure by first-quarter 2025, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter. Dragonfly closed its third fund, worth $650 million, in April 2022 shortly before the onset of the crypto bear market. The cryptocurrency industry bore the shock of the Terra ecosystem's collapse that May, followed by the sudden capitulation of crypto exchange FTX six months later. The ensuing crypto winter made for a challenging investing environment across the industry. While the fourth fund's target is more than 20% smaller than its predecessor's, it remains a sign of the VC sector's bullish sentiment. The company declined to comment when contacted by CoinDesk. |
The Takeaway: Move Over Meme Coins |
By David Zimmerman, an analyst at K33 Research: Memecoins have always been a feature of crypto, but only recently has the sector grown to become a dominant theme in the ecosystem. Memecoin launchpad “Pump.fun” reached over $100 million in revenue after just 217 days of going live, a record for the crypto industry. Since Pump.fun hit that milestone, the sector has cooled off. As the dust settles, lively debate has broken out as crypto natives lament what memecoins do to the industry’s image.
University College Dublin lecturer Paul Dylan-Ennis told The Block: “It's all the worst elements of our industry condensed into one epilepsy-inducing website.”
More than 99% of the memecoins launched on Pump.fun are dead within the first week. Nonetheless, users have launched around 2 million coins. Memecoins listed on CoinGecko boast a collective market cap of $40 billion. This is six times larger than tokens (not tokenized assets) categorized in the Real World Asset (RWA) sector at $6.6 billion, which involves the tokenization of everything from U.S. Treasuries to insurance.
Many crypto natives find these figures disheartening, leading to a palpable growth in the cohort of so-called “crypto nihilists” within the industry – people who think we are doing nothing here but slinging memes. However, while the crazy corners of crypto rage on, the serious part of the industry makes great strides.
Stablecoin market cap recently hit $175 billion, as demand for crypto’s greatest product grows. The utility and significance of USD-pegged stablecoins is often lost on crypto natives in Western countries. However, stablecoins have proven to be crucial products for people in emerging markets, whether they are avoiding hyperinflation of their native currency, or avoiding predatory remittance fees.
Meanwhile, infrastructure for crypto payments continues to develop. Mastercard recently partnered with Mercuryo, enabling users to spend their self-custodied crypto at more than 100 million merchants. PayPal and Venmo just integrated Ethereum Naming Service, enabling their users to transfer crypto by using readable names instead of traditional wallet addresses.
The Helium Network, a decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) project going after big telcos, has seen 113,000 people sign up to its mobile service. That is 113,000 people who have ditched the likes of Verizon for a crypto alternative.
Crypto is also integrating itself into our lives through messaging apps. Telegram, with nearly 1 billion monthly active users, integrated The Open Network (TON), allowing users to transfer crypto as easily as sending a text. LINE, an Asian messaging app with over 230 million monthly active users, is following a similar plan with Kaia.
Both TON and Kaia are focused on building out mini apps that will enable crypto usage within Telegram and LINE. TADA, a major ride-hailing app in Southeast-Asian, just launched “TADA Mini” which enables users to book rides through Telegram and pay using TON or USDT. Kaia Wave, an incentive program starting in Q4, is offering up to $1.2 million in support for developers building out mini apps on LINE.
If that were not enough, there is every indication that the $12 billion in tokenized assets on-chain is only the beginning for the RWA sector. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, a tokenized investment fund focused on U.S. Treasuries and repo agreements, reached over $500 million in capital deployed this summer. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink frequently reiterates the vision to “tokenize all assets,” with BUIDL’s launch in March being just the start.
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