Blockwall - May 2025 - What happened in Web3?
Dear Founders, Investors, and Friends,
In May, stablecoins gained further ground across payment rails, with Visa, Stripe, and Worldpay announcing major integrations.
Robinhood revealed plans for a blockchain-based trading platform in Europe. And tokenization efforts received fresh momentum, with major players signaling what’s next on both the infrastructure and regulatory front.
Without further ado — and with a slight delay we apologize for — let’s dive into last month’s key developments.
Stablecoin Adoption Accelerates
Stablecoins continued to dominate the headlines. This month, Worldpay — one of the world’s largest payment processors — partnered with BVNK to enable B2B stablecoin payouts. This means merchants can fund accounts in fiat (USD, EUR, GBP), which BVNK then converts into USDC or USDT and sends globally — without requiring users to interact with wallets or exchanges.
Visa is also expanding its stablecoin footprint. In partnership with Bridge, a Stripe subsidiary, the payments giant has launched a new card solution that allows users in Latin America to spend their stablecoins in everyday transactions. The rollout will initially cover Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile — a region where stablecoins are increasingly being used as a hedge against currency volatility.
Stripe, too, is further doubling down. The company unveiled a new product called “Stablecoin Financial Accounts”, enabling businesses around the world to manage their operations directly in stablecoins. In parallel, Stripe announced another stablecoin-based debit card in partnership with fintech firm Ramp, which will also launch in Latin America.
First it was Visa and Mastercard. Then PayPal followed by Stripe. Now Wordpay. The trend is clear: everyone is integrating stablecoin functionality. According to some reports B2B stablecoin payments are already annualizing at $36 billion — covering supplier payments, global payroll, and treasury flows. With embedded APIs, abstracted custody, and growing integrations by infrastructure providers and enterprises, these figures will only continue to rise — with stablecoins increasingly becoming the invisible infrastructure powering the next iteration of finance.
U.S. Senate Advances the GENIUS Act
Washington is taking notice. In May, the U.S. Senate advanced the GENIUS Act, a bipartisan bill creating the first federal framework for payment stablecoins.
The bill mandates full reserve backing (cash, Treasuries, repos), issuer registration with the Fed or OCC, and introduces a threshold system: firms with under $10 billion in circulation may operate under qualifying state regimes, while larger players fall under federal oversight. It also prohibits stablecoins from sharing yield with retail users — a clause critics argue protects banks, not consumers.
It also includes a controversial carve-out: the bill exempts the sitting President and Vice President from the issuer restrictions — a provision that effectively allows politically affiliated initiatives, such as Liberty Financial’s USD1, which is linked to the Trump family, to proceed without constraint.
Now, how does GENIUS differ from the EU's MiCA? Mainly by being more issuer-friendly. Under MiCA, "significant" stablecoin issuers must keep up to 60% of reserves in commercial bank deposits, restricting access to higher-yielding assets like Treasuries and cutting into their revenues. Further, some argue this approach concentrates run risks on commercial banks during periods of large-scale redemptions.
Still, the GENIUS Act isn’t final. Further revisions are expected, and it must be reconciled with the House’s Stable Act before reaching the President’s desk and ultimately become law.
Circle’s IPO Sends a Signal
One could argue that the regulatory momentum around stablecoins set the stage for more.
Right at the turn of the month, Circle — issuer of USDC — made its long-awaited public debut (technically a June event, but too important to push to the next edition). Shares surged from a $31 IPO price to a $97 high before closing at $82.80, valuing the company at over $16 billion — the second-strongest first-day performance of any U.S. IPO this year. Since then, the stock has continued to climb and now trades at around $160.
The blockbuster debut not only confirmed that investor appetite for stablecoin exposure runs deeper than many assumed, it also signaled that the IPO window for crypto firms might just be reopening.
The key question for Circle now: how will the company grow — or rather defend? — its revenue base in an environment of falling rates and intensifying competition?
The Race to Tokenize Equities Is On
Beyond stablecoins, real-world assets (RWAs) continued their march onchain. Kraken revealed xStocks, their tokenized stocks offering on Solana. RWA protocol Superstate unveiled “Opening Bell”, a platform to issue SEC-registered equities natively onchain. And Robinhood urged the SEC to enable token issuance for public companies.
At the SEC’s recent Digital Assets Roundtable, that momentum was on full display. Commissioner Hester Peirce expressed openness to regulatory experimentation, while financial industry giants — including BlackRock, Nasdaq, Circle, DTCC, and Franklin Templeton — underscored tokenization’s potential to unlock illiquid markets, embed compliance directly into assets, and streamline legacy infrastructure. The mood was clear: innovation is welcome, but it needs regulatory clarity to scale.
From Wall Street to DeFi: Apollo and Securitize Bring Private Credit Onchain
Meanwhile, tokenization is also reaching deeper into capital markets. Apollo Global Management, tokenization firm Securitize, lending platform Morpho, and risk firm Gauntlet launched a pilot that brings a multi-billion-dollar private credit strategy onchain.
Their new fund, ACRED, offers tokenized exposure to Apollo’s credit portfolio via sACRED tokens. These can be deposited into the Morpho protocol, where users can execute a leveraged strategy to generate higher yield. Gauntlet dynamically manages leverage parameters, and compliance is enforced directly in the token via built-in KYC — without breaking DeFi’s composability.
It’s a new type of capital stack: institutionally structured, but natively programmable. If successful, it could push tokenized credit beyond simple wrappers and into innovative DeFi products.
Coinbase: Between Innovation, Major Milestones, and Exploits
It was a tough month for Coinbase.
Things kicked off with a new release: the company introduced x402, a new payments protocol designed to enable machine-to-machine transactions. In essence, the protocol allows AI agents and bots to pay for things like API access using stablecoins from a Web3 wallet, with early partners — and adopters — including AWS, Chainlink, and Anthropic.
Shortly after, the company hit a major milestone: Coinbase was added to the S&P 500 index — a symbolic victory for the company and for crypto’s broader institutional acceptance. The stock initially rallied on the news, gaining over 12% in a single day.
But the celebration didn’t last. Just days later, Coinbase confirmed a major data breach affecting over 80,000 users. According to Coinbase, the breach stemmed from a social engineering attack targeting outsourced support staff in India, who were reportedly bribed to hand over access credentials. These credentials were then used to retrieve sensitive customer data — including names, addresses, masked banking details, and even ID documents.
What followed was a wave of criticism. While Coinbase emphasized that no private keys or passwords were compromised, it acknowledged potential remediation costs of up to $400 million. Even more damaging: reports surfaced that the company may have known about the breach as early as December. Some onchain investigators had publicly flagged suspicious activity months ago, and Bloomberg later revealed that attackers may have accessed internal systems as far back as January.
To make matters worse, the SEC reportedly re-opened an investigation into Coinbase’s 2021 IPO filings, questioning whether user metrics may have been overstated.
Let’s see how Coinbase handles the situation in the coming months. One thing is certain, though: with competition heating up — especially from players like Robinhood — the timing couldn’t have been worse.
Public Companies Rewire Their Balance Sheets
As regulators debate and builders build, a growing number of public companies are rewriting their treasury strategy using crypto.
The original playbook, pioneered by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, involves issuing debt and equity to accumulate Bitcoin, effectively turning the company into a leveraged Bitcoin holding entity. This approach has positioned MicroStrategy as a proxy for Bitcoin exposure in the public markets.
Now, the approach is gaining traction.
A new vehicle named Nakamoto, led by Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, is aiming to replicate and globalize the strategy. The firm recently merged with KindlyMD, a U.S. healthcare company, to form a publicly listed entity that will hold and manage Bitcoin on its balance sheet. Backed by over $710 million in committed capital, including a $200 million BTC-backed convertible bond, Nakamoto that there’s demand for institutionalized BTC accumulation.
But the trend isn’t stopping at Bitcoin.
In May, SharpLink, a publicly traded gaming company, announced a $425 million ETH treasury strategy, led by Consensys, the Ethereum software company. The move is backed by prominent crypto venture capital firms and infrastructure providers, including ParaFi Capital, Electric Capital, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital. SharpLink plans to accumulate ETH as a long-term strategic asset, effectively becoming one of the first public vehicles to mirror the MicroStrategy model for Ethereum.
The same idea is now also accelerating around Solana. SOL Strategies, a Canada-listed firm, filed to raise $1 billion for a Solana-focused treasury and staking strategy. Unlike the BTC model, SOL Strategies isn’t just passively holding its assets; it aims to build operational exposure through staking and participation in Solana-based financial infrastructure.
Together, these moves point to a broader shift: public companies aren’t just exploring crypto infrastructure, they’re starting to compete on asset exposure. What began as a Bitcoin-specific thesis is evolving into a multi-asset treasury paradigm — one that may completely reshape balance sheet compositions in the digital age.
Key Events of the Last Few Weeks
Robinhood doubles down on crypto. The U.S. fintech is acquiring Canadian crypto firm WonderFi for $179 million in an all-cash deal — expanding its regulated exchange footprint. At the same time, Bloomberg reports that Robinhood is exploring a blockchain-based trading platform in Europe to enable tokenized trading of U.S. equities. While still unconfirmed, the rumored move would signal a major step toward onchain retail investing. (Sources: Bloomberg, WonderFi)
MiCA momentum builds across the EU. BitGo, Trade Republic, and Bitstamp all received their MiCA licences, allowing them to offer crypto custody, trading, and transfers across the EU. (Sources: BitGo, WiWo, Bitstamp)
Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade goes live. The upgrade improved Layer‑2 scalability and enabled major UX improvements. (Source: CoinDesk)
Morgan Stanley plans crypto trading on E*Trade. The U.S. bank is exploring the launch of spot crypto trading on its retail brokerage platform, which serves over 5 million users, starting in 2026. (Source: Bloomberg)
JP Morgan to enable client BTC purchases. CEO Jamie Dimon confirmed the bank will soon allow clients to buy Bitcoin — though the bank won’t custody the assets. (Source: Ondo)
FIFA develops its own blockchain. Built on the Avalanche network, this new blockchain should primarily support the trading and collecting of digital collectibles and global fan engagement. (Source: Avalanche)
Solana R&D firm Anza reveals Alpenglow. Introduced at the Accelerate conference in NYC, this new consensus protocol aims to make Solana 100x faster. (Source: TheBlock)
Deutsche Börse votes to digitize share registration. According to the announcement, the shareholder vote enables Clearstream to digitally register shares, replacing the traditional paper-based global note with a digital counterpart. The system will be live on the company's private D7 network starting in 2026. (Source: Blockstories)
What We’ve Been Reading
The Future of Stablecoins (M0 & Artemis) – A comprehensive overview of current stablecoin architectures, including design trade-offs, adoption dynamics, and key use cases.
Stablecoins and the Future of Onchain Finance (Visa) – Visa outlines its vision for stablecoins in the global financial system. It examines use cases for financial institutions and offers a practical framework for adoption.
Five Countries Leading the Digital Asset Shift (WisdomTree) – A global snapshot of crypto momentum. The post highlights how Nigeria, Brazil, South Korea, the UAE, and the U.S. are shaping digital asset regulation and adoption.
Crypto VC in Q1 2025 (Galaxy) – Galaxy’s quarterly VC report tracks funding trends, sector allocation, and investor sentiment across early-stage crypto deals. See Dominic’s LinkedIn post for the key insights.
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