Stripe's Becoming a Stablecoin Company
Olivia Capozzalo & Christopher Storaker
June 12, 2025
gm Defiers!
Today’s big story:
- Payments giant Stripe just acquired crypto wallet infra Privy
Plus:
- Key crypto legislation moves toward full vote in House and Senate
- 30% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply is now held by centralized entities: report
- EigenLayer partners with Sentient to test AI for governance
- SSV 2.0 and based applications: Decentralized infrastructure for secure, scalable Ethereum staking [SPONSORED]
- How Coinshift is progressing the stablecoin space [SPONSORED]
Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.
Money is broken. Finance today is trapped in analog while the world runs on code. M0 rewires finance at its core. This is financial infrastructure for builders who create, not extract.
Soul is a cross-chain lending protocol aggregator that unifies liquidity across lending protocols, offering seamless access to the best borrowing and lending rates across ecosystems. Users can supply assets on one protocol and borrow against them on another, optimizing yield strategies without bridging assets.
Money is broken. Our financial system is trapped in analog bureaucracy while the rest of the world runs on code. Fintech built nicer interfaces, but institutions and gatekeepers still loom large.
M0 isn’t here to polish old systems with prettier frontends. We believe permissionless stablecoins rewire finance itself, so builders can control their own money. We put programmable money directly into the hands of builders who create, not extract.
We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today
Stripe’s Stablecoin Stack Is Almost Complete
Earlier this year, Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1B to give itself stablecoin rails. Yesterday, it grabbed Privy for an undisclosed amount. Privy is a crypto wallet-in-a-box solution that powers 75 million accounts across 1,000+ teams, including heavyweights like Farcaster, Hyperliquid, dYdX, and OpenSea.
Privy was a missing link in Stripe’s stablecoin-enabled commerce toolbox: it fixes the two key UX pain points when interfacing with web3 platforms: onboarding and moving assets.
With this combo, a developer can drive stablecoin payments full circle in five API calls:
- User signs in with email/OAuth → Privy silently spins up a secure, seedless wallet.
- Stripe’s hosted On-Ramp converts fiat (from cards/ACH transfers) into USDC right inside the user’s UI.
- Funds are parked in Bridge accounts in Circle’s USDC or Bridge’s USDB (available across 101 countries).
- Users can pay creators or other merchants in stablecoins — or in local fiat — through the same endpoint.
- Users can move their assets on-chain with sponsored gas (no native-token or fee drama), and can spend those stables in any storefront using Stripe’s Bridge-backed Visa card.
KYC, Travel Rule, and fraud tooling stay inside Stripe.
The Gaps Stripe Still Hasn’t Filled
Stripe is betting on mass-market adoption of crypto platforms, and it wants to be the payment rails for that. For this to work, there are a few tools still missing:
- One-click off-ramp widget. Bridge has the API. Stripe hasn’t shipped the consumer UI.
- Built-in token swaps/DEX aggregation. Users can’t trade inside Stripe yet.
- Yield-generation on idle balances. PayPal plans to reward its PYUSD holders. Stripe hasn’t made any yield-related moves yet.
Why Now, and What Comes Next?
Stablecoins processed $15.6 trillion on-chain last year, already outpacing Visa. That velocity, plus regulatory tailwinds that finally recognize self-custody wallets as ordinary plumbing, have cleared the runway for enterprises to join the race.
This time around, fintechs aren’t adding “crypto” as a novelty badge; they’re absorbing it as the next default rail. Stripe is betting that whoever unifies cards, fiat, and stablecoins behind a single integration will capture the lion’s share of that $15 trillion+ flow — and it wants that flow in one API.
Keep building,
Chris Storaker, tokenization advisor, tinkerer at The Defiant
📈 Markets in the last 24 hrs:
| TICKER | VALUE | 24H | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Bitcoin | $107,340 | -1.97 % |
 | Ethereum | $2,730.86 | -4.39 % |
 | XRP | $2.24 | -3.79 % |
 | BNB | $661.2 | -1.03 % |
 | Solana | $157.58 | -5.42 % |
 MessariPortals | MINDSHARE Rank | MINDSHARE % Change (7d) |
|---|---|---|
 Solana SOL | 6  | 41.55% |
 Avalanche AVAX | 20 | 28.95% |
 TRON TRX | 8  | -19.81% |
| Powered by Messari Portals | ||
This is the news that mattered in the past 24 hrs
- Both the Senate’s stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act, and the House’s broader crypto market structure bill, the CLARITY Act, have advanced toward a full vote this week.
- A new report from crypto exchange Gemini and blockchain data firm Glassnode found that more than 30% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply is currently held by just 216 centralized entities.
- Top restaking protocol EigenLayer is introducing an “AI adjudicator” in its decision-making process, working with AI development platform Sentient; EigenLayer is currently the third largest DeFi protocol overall by total value locked, with over $12.8 billion in TVL.
🎬WATCH
In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, our resident NFT expert Vinny spoke with Alex Estorick, EIC of web3 art-focused magazine, Right Click Save, about the evolving landscape of NFTs and digital art.
They discuss the convergence of art and technology, the financialization of culture, and the role of artists in a world where art and finance are increasingly intertwined.
That’s it for today — if you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends! https://thedefiant.io/subscribe
