Will This Plan From Stripe Send Stablecoins Mainstream?

Gm friends,

With Bitcoin looking good right now, there’s also plenty of bullish news around stablecoins, with a big development at Stripe promising to expand dollar-pegged stables more globally.

Now, here’s what’s in today’s issue:

• Chart of the day: The battle of hard assets.
• David shares his thoughts on Stripe preparing to test new stablecoin, a $4T tokenized real estate market, DeFi Development Corp planning to buy more SOL, Ethereum Devs testing gas limit increase & Senator Lumis is skeptical about Fed crypto pivot.
• Today on chain.
• Altcoin Alpha.

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Chart of the Day

Where exactly does Bitcoin fit into the investment landscape right now? If the current bullish resurgence continues we might get a clearer view of where BTC stands compared to other assets, and especially curious at the moment is that gold–which has been on a enormously strong run–isn’t letting up, meaning BTC and gold are now moving together.

The current mainstream thesis for Bitcoin, as pushed by the likes of Larry Fink and Michael Saylor, is that BTC is digital gold rather than a peer-to-peer money, so climbing at the same time as gold fits in with that idea, although it’s also possible we’re in an unusual situation where gold rallies as a safe haven asset, and BTC rallies simultaneously in response to liquidity and policy news.

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News Now

Stripe Preparing to Test New Stablecoin Product

The stablecoin market is growing–total stablecoin market cap currently stands at $239 billion, with no doubts about utility–and now major payments processing firm Stripe has confirmed that it has plans to make its own entry into this surging sector.

This was made clear when Stripe Product Manager Jennifer Lee posted that, “Stripe is building a NEW stablecoin product”, and this was reposted by Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, who confirmed, “we’ve wanted to build this product for around a decade, and it’s now happening.”

According to the initial post from Lee, the product is to be powered by Bridge, a stablecoin infra company acquired by Stripe in February for $1.1 billion, and will be aimed at companies based outside the US, UK or EU, that are “interested in dollar access”.

And with millions of businesses using Stripe, and global access on the agenda with the new product plan, this development could be a huge catalyst to further drive the worldwide adoption of stablecoin payments.

Image from Token Terminal

Deloitte Forecasts $4 Trillion Tokenized Real Estate Market

Tokenized RWAs continue to be a powerful crypto narrative, and this is now backed up by global professional services network Deloitte. That’s according to a new report from the Deloitte Center for Financial Services titled Digital dividends: How tokenized real estate could revolutionize asset management.

The report is focused on the tokenization of commercial real estate, and predicts a massive expansion in this sector by the year 2035. And the headline figure from that report is a forecast for global tokenized real estate value to hit $4 trillion by that date, which is a huge expansion from a value of below $300 billion in 2024 and means a CAGR of 27%.

The report identifies three key tokenization components within this sector–real estate funds, ownership of loans and securitizations, and ownership of undeveloped land and in-construction real estate projects–concluding that tokenized loans and securitizations will take the largest share of the sector, growing to almost $2.4 trillion.

DeFi Development Corp Files $1 Billion Shelf Offering, Plans to Buy More SOL

We’ve mentioned the NASDAQ-listed DeFi Development Corporation here before, as it rebranded from the name Janover (with the ticker to change from JNVR to DFDV), and embarked on a strategy of acquiring and staking SOL as the principal asset in its treasury reserve, and also running Solana validators.

So could the DeFi Development Corp become the MicroStrategy of Solana? It’s not at that level of commitment yet (and stated that it will “deploy capital strategically and efficiently when market conditions are attractive”, which sounds different from Michael Saylor’s dedication to top-blasting BTC), but the company has filed with the SEC for a $1 billion shelf offering (meaning securities can be sold gradually over time without re-registering for every sale) with the intention of using the proceeds “primarily for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Solana”.

So, it looks like Solana could be about more than just torrents of insane memecoin launches after all, or maybe the memecoin craze effectively battle-tested the Solana network.

Ethereum Devs Test Gas Limit Increase

With Ethereum’s next major hardfork–known as Pectra–approaching (the target date is May 7th), Ethereum core developers have been testing a proposed gas limit increase. This relates to Ethereum Improvement Proposal 9678 and would result, if implemented, in a 4X increase to the gas limit.

The point is to scale execution on the Ethereum mainchain, with ETH feeling the pressure this cycle from competitors–especially Solana, which is outperforming Ethereum–and fielding criticism around whether Layer-2s, which are intended as a scaling solution, are actually taking value away from ETH itself (with Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson recently describing Ethereum Layer-2s as “parasitic”).

A gas limit increase can improve efficiency by allowing blocks to handle more transactions and more complex processes, boosting speed and reducing congestion, although on the negative side, it creates more work for nodes, and this increase in operating requirements could put the pressure on independent node operators, creating a more centralized network if the bulk of processing is only run by large outfits.

Notably, this comes soon after Vitalik Buterin suggested swapping Ethereum’s EVM system for a framework called RISC-V. That would be a major change, and it looks like Ethereum is exploring all options to maintain its position as the dominant Layer-1 after Bitcoin.

Senator Lummis Skeptical About Fed Crypto Pivot

You may have seen recent positive crypto news emanating from the Fed, as it last week officially withdrew guidance for banks related to dealing with crypto, the idea being that the guidance was restrictive, and removing it indicates that crypto can now be treated the same as any other financial asset.

However, following on from that Senator Cynthis Lummis–who is well known for her strongly pro-crypto stance–has criticized the Fed’s actions, describing them as “just noise, not real progress”.

This came in a post on X in which she explained that, “the Fed assassinated companies within the industry and hurt American interests by stifling innovation and shuttering businesses”.

It’s a combative approach from Senator Lummis, who also posted a thread explaining her position in detail, including the observation that, “the Fed staff behind Operation Chokepoint 2.0 are the same people still working on crypto issues today”.

Operation Chokepoint 2.0 was a scheme to debank crypto firms, and the comments above are a reminder that despite so much bullish regulatory news from the US over the past few months, the crypto industry shouldn’t get complacent, or as Senator Lummis put it: “This fight is far from over”.

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Today On Chain

Looking back over past cycles, the MVRV Z-Score has given a good idea of where BTC is headed, and right now it may be moving back into full bull market territory. This indicator shows the BTC market cap, the realized cap, and the Z-score, which is for standardizing data.

This can signal how fairly BTC is priced, so when the Z-score enters the red region we’re in overvalued territory, the green area at the bottom is the opposite, and you can see that the Z-score is now creeping back up into an upward trajectory but is still nowhere near the overvalued region.

That said though, there are no guarantees these kinds of indicators will continue to work in every cycle, particularly as BTC is still such a relatively young asset.

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Altcoin Alpha

• The world’s first spot XRP ETF launched in Brazil courtesy of crypto asset manager Hashdex, which announced that the fund–which uses the ticker XRPH11–would offer investors “secure and regulated access to XRP”.
• MetaMask has announced that users can now select which tokens to use to pay for gas fees when making transactions, with USDT, USDC, DAI, ETH, wETH, wBTC, wstETH and wSOL all available as options on Ethereum mainnet.
• New DeFi platform Loopscale was exploited by hackers. The attack targeted SOL and USDC vaults, with around $5.8 million worth of assets stolen, and Loopscale is currently trying to negotiate the return of 90% of the funds.
• Telecommunications-focused DePIN network Helium, which is based on Solana, has partnered with AT&T in the US to provide AT&T customers with additional WiFi coverage.
• Hit British crime drama Peaky Blinders is set to become a Web3 game, with Anonymous Labs planning the development of a blockchain-integrated AAA title scheduled for release sometime in 2026.

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Legal Disclaimer

Wealth Mastery (Lark Davis, and the Wealth Mastery writing team) are not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is Wealth Mastery registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. Wealth Mastery is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.

You can find a full disclosure of all my crypto & venture investments here.