Visa and Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure platform now owned by Stripe, announced a major expansion of their collaboration that will bring stablecoin-linked Visa cards to more than 100 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East by the end of 2026, according to an announcement posted on the Visa website today.

The program, which is already live in 18 countries, allows fintech firms and wallet providers to offer cards that let users spend stablecoin balances at any of Visa’s 175 million merchant locations worldwide, the announcement said.

Onchain Settlement

Under the expanded partnership, Bridge’s stablecoin-funded cards will leverage Visa’s payments network while settlement can occur on-chain through a pilot involving Lead Bank, a participating issuer in Visa’s stablecoin settlement initiative. Lead Bank settles Visa’s stablecoin transactions on the Solana blockchain as part of Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot.

The pilot is evaluating whether settling card transactions with stablecoins can increase operational efficiency, improve reconciliation and give issuers more flexibility in how value moves across payment networks.

“Visa is committed to meeting businesses where they operate, and increasingly, that’s onchain,” said Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto.

Crypto Rails for Payments

Sheffield described the expanded Bridge collaboration as a step toward integrating blockchain-native currency settlement into the broader payments ecosystem while maintaining the convenience and ubiquity of Visa’s network.

Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge in 2025 underpins much of the technical infrastructure for the offering, enabling developers and fintech platforms to issue stablecoin-backed Visa cards through a single API.

Popular digital wallet providers such as Phantom and MetaMask are already using the solution, giving millions of users the ability to spend stablecoins for everyday purchases, the announcement said.

Custom Stablecoins

Bridge’s co-founder Zach Abrams said the expansion will help businesses launching custom stablecoins integrate them seamlessly into card programs, an approach he described as part of a multi-year effort to help firms “own their own financial stack.”

The announcement comes days after MoonPay and M0 launched PYUSDx, a platform designed to simplify the creation and management of application-specific stablecoins. PYUSDx leverages PYUSD, the stablecoin developed by PayPal and issued by Paxos Trust Company.

Industry analysts see the rollout as emblematic of how traditional payments firms and crypto infrastructure providers are increasingly working together. Stablecoin-linked cards have grown rapidly as a bridge between digital assets and real-world spending, offering a way for stablecoins to be used at scale without requiring direct merchant acceptance of blockchain payments.

Visa’s move also aligns with broader experimentation in the payments industry around stablecoins and blockchain settlement, as regulatory frameworks such as the GENIUS Act in the U.S. establish clearer rules for stablecoin issuance and use.

Ripple is no longer just moving money. It wants to be the entire pipe.

The company shared with CoinDesk on Wednesday a press release that outlines a major expansion of Ripple Payments which turns the platform into a full-stack infrastructure layer for fiat and stablecoin money movement.

Businesses can now collect, hold, exchange, and pay out in both traditional currencies and stablecoins through a single provider, rather than stitching together separate vendors for custody, collections, conversion, and settlement.

The new capabilities come from two recent acquisitions. Palisade, which handles custody and treasury automation, powers the managed custody layer that lets businesses provision wallets at scale and sweep funds into operational accounts.

Rail, a virtual accounts and collections platform, enables businesses to accept fiat and stablecoin pay-ins through named virtual accounts with automated conversion and settlement.

The result is that a fintech doing cross-border payouts no longer needs one provider for custody, another for foreign exchange, a third for stablecoin liquidity, and a fourth for local payout rails. Ripple is consolidating all of that into one platform with one integration.

“For the global financial system to evolve, fintechs and financial institutions need infrastructure that treats digital assets with the same rigor as traditional finance,” said Monica Long, president at Ripple, said in a prepared statement. “Ripple has built the blueprint for blockchain-based enterprise solutions designed to operate at global scale for regulated finance.”

Meanwhile, Ripple said the platform has now processed more than $100 billion in total volume. That milestone lands against a broader backdrop of stablecoin adoption accelerating across the financial system, with global annual transaction volumes reaching $33 trillion last year and stablecoins now accounting for 30% of all onchain transaction volume.

The expansion comes at an interesting time for Ripple specifically.

XRP has been under pressure, down roughly 5% over the past week, according to CoinDesk market data, amid the broader market sell-off driven by the U.S.-Iran conflict.

But the payments business operates largely independently of the token’s price, and the institutional adoption trajectory suggests Ripple’s enterprise strategy is gaining traction regardless of what the spot market does.

A Bitcoin Policy Institute study delves into how artificial intelligence models choose among money forms in a variety of hypothetical scenarios, revealing a strong inclination toward Bitcoin and digital money over fiat in most cases. The research tested 36 models across six providers and generated more than 9,000 responses across a spectrum of monetary tasks, from long-term value preservation to everyday payments. The findings show Bitcoin outpacing stablecoins in many contexts, while stablecoins regain sway in transactional use cases like micropayments and cross-border transfers. The study’s authors emphasize that the results reflect training data patterns and framing rather than widespread real-world adoption, but they nonetheless offer a unique lens on how AI interprets money in a digital era, with results released via MoneyForAI.org.

Key takeaways

• 36 AI models across six providers produced 9,072 responses to monetary scenarios; Bitcoin was selected in 48.3% of cases, the most-used instrument overall.
• When asked to preserve purchasing power over multi-year horizons, 79.1% of responses favored Bitcoin, the study’s most lopsided result.
• In payments, micropayments, and cross-border transfers, stablecoins were chosen 53.2% of the time versus 36% for Bitcoin, highlighting a transactional edge for stablecoins in certain contexts.
• Nearly 91% of responses preferred digitally native instruments (including Bitcoin or other digital assets) over fiat, with zero models rating fiat as their top choice.
• Model-provider differences emerged: Anthropic models averaged 68% BTC preference; OpenAI 26%; Google 43%; and xAI 39%, illustrating how training data shapes outputs rather than deterministic financial forecasting.

Tickers mentioned: $BTC

Market context: The study arrives amid ongoing experimentation with digital money in AI-assisted scenarios, underscoring how institutional and research communities are evaluating Bitcoin’s role as a borderless, programmable asset alongside stablecoins and other digital instruments.

What to watch next – The Bitcoin Policy Institute plans to broaden the model set and providers, test different prompt framings, and explore additional monetary scenarios to validate whether these preferences hold under varied conditions.

Why it matters

For users and investors, the findings offer a nuanced view of how AI systems—trained on vast data corpora—perceive money forms in a digital economy. The recurring tilt toward Bitcoin in long-horizon scenarios reinforces Bitcoin’s narrative as a non-sovereign store of value that can operate independently of any single country’s monetary policy. Yet the study also highlights practical reasons stablecoins remain appealing for transactions: near-instant settlement, compatibility with existing payment rails, and the ability to freeze or limit access in certain jurisdictions, which some participants see as a drawback for a universally accessible currency. The methodological caveats matter for interpretation: the results reflect synthetic prompts and model training data rather than current market adoption or consumer behavior.

From a development perspective, the research underscores how AI agents—when asked to optimize for efficiency or resilience in simulated economies—tend to converge on a small set of digital money forms. This convergence could inform the design of wallet interfaces, AI-driven financial planning tools, and cyber-physical systems that rely on digital value transfers. It also raises policy questions about the role of programmable money in cross-border ecosystems and how guardians of financial stability might respond to AI-generated preferences that favor digital currencies in abstract decision environments. In other words, the study is less about predicting the next price move and more about understanding how AI framing shapes perceptions of what “money” should look like in a digitized world.

The research also points to distinct differences across AI families. Anthropic models leaned most toward Bitcoin, while other providers displayed broader variance. These disparities remind readers that the results are contingent on the models’ training data and internal prompts rather than a universal forecast for asset demand. While some may interpret the Bitcoin bias as an endorsement of BTC in all contexts, the authors are careful to emphasize that the observed preferences do not translate directly into real-world adoption or policy outcomes. They describe the results as patterns emerging from the interplay between model design and the digital money landscape rather than a prescriptive verdict on fiat, stablecoins, or Bitcoin itself.

What to watch next

• Expanded model coverage: expect the BPI to include more AI models and more providers to test whether the BTC preference persists across the broader AI ecosystem.
• Framing sensitivity: researchers will experiment with alternative prompts to determine how wording and context influence outcomes.
• Broader scenarios: additional situations—such as storing earnings across multiple countries and complex settlement schemes—could further illuminate how AI perceives money in varied environments.
• Implications for tooling: developers building AI-assisted financial tools may use these insights to shape asset-selection features and risk disclosures in simulated environments.

Sources & verification

Bitcoin’s role in AI-driven monetary tests: what the study reveals

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) emerged as the leading instrument across the majority of prompts, appearing in 48.3% of the 9,072 responses generated by 36 models across six providers, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s report released on MoneyForAI.org. The exercise probed a range of economic scenarios—from preserving purchasing power over years to everyday payments—testing how AI agents allocate value across money forms. The result is a strong tilt toward digital money, particularly Bitcoin, as the substrate for economic activity that can function across borders and regulatory regimes.

In long-horizon scenarios, the study found 79.1% of AI responses favored Bitcoin, marking the most pronounced bias in any tested category. This constellation of results suggests that, when asked to optimize for durability and sovereignty, AI agents consistently gravitate toward assets that retain value independently of any single country’s monetary policy. The digital-money axis appears to be the most favored frame for multi-year planning within the tested prompts, hinting at how future AI tools might simulate or advise on wealth preservation in a world where fiat policies are volatile or opaque.

Conversely, when the focus shifts to payments and transactions—whether micropayments or cross-border transfers—stablecoins win a higher share: 53.2% of responses favored stablecoins, while Bitcoin attracted 36%. The transactional efficiency and network familiarity of stablecoins explain their appeal in these contexts, where rapid settlement and compatibility with existing systems can matter as much as asset selection in a simulated environment. A prominent industry observer noted that stablecoins’ ability to be frozen is a double-edged sword: it provides control in certain regulatory settings but removes a layer of confidence for users seeking an uninterrupted transfer capability. Jeff Park, the chief investment officer at Bitwise, framed the context succinctly: the “most obvious explanation” for stablecoins’ relative performance in these scenarios is the ability to freeze, whereas Bitcoin cannot be frozen, offering a durable trust anchor in a digital suite of tools.

Across all responses, the AI agents favored digitally native instruments—Bitcoin, stablecoins, altcoins, tokenized real-world assets, or compute units—over fiat in roughly 91% of cases. The study’s authors emphasize that fiat relevance did not appear as a top overall choice in any of the 36 models tested. They caution readers that these results reflect patterns in training data and prompt design more than real-world adoption patterns. In other words, the study captures how AI systems interpret monetary constructs when asked to optimize for hypothetical outcomes, rather than a forecast of consumer behavior or regulatory impact.

The analysis also reveals notable differences among model families. Anthropic models averaged a Bitcoin preference of 68%, with OpenAI at 26%, Google at 43%, and xAI at 39%. These numbers illustrate how distinctive training corpora and prompt engineering shape outputs, reinforcing the study’s central caveat: responses are indicative of data patterns rather than prescriptive predictions about the future of money. The researchers acknowledge that the prompt framing used in several scenarios may have steered results toward certain instruments, and they plan to explore alternative framings in future work to measure sensitivity and robustness of the observed preferences. Aside from the methodological note, the study contributes to a growing discourse about how AI agents conceptualize money in a highly digitized financial landscape, where fiat, stablecoins, and digital assets coexist in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.

TLDR

• American Bitcoin purchased 11,298 ASIC miners to expand its bitcoin mining operations.
• The new equipment will increase the company’s total mining capacity by about 12%.
• The miners will add approximately 3.05 exahashes per second to the company’s hashrate.
• American Bitcoin will deploy the machines at its Drumheller site in Alberta in March 2026.
• The company’s total owned fleet will grow to 89,242 miners with 28.1 EH per second of capacity.

American Bitcoin confirmed the purchase of 11,298 ASIC miners to expand its bitcoin mining operations. The company said the new equipment will increase total capacity by about 12%. The machines will deploy at its Drumheller, Alberta, site in March 2026.

American Bitcoin Expands Fleet With 11,298 New Miners

American Bitcoin said the purchase will add about 3.05 exahashes per second of capacity. The miners will operate at an efficiency of 13.5 joules per terahash. As a result, the company’s total owned fleet will reach 89,242 units. The combined capacity will represent about 28.1 EH/s at an average efficiency of 16 J/TH.

The company stated that the equipment will arrive and be deployed in March 2026. Once installation finishes, the operational fleet will include 58,999 active miners. These machines will run at about 25 EH/s with an efficiency of 14.1 J/TH. Based on current network data, the added capacity equals about 0.3% of global hashrate. That share could produce about 42 bitcoin each month, or roughly 515 bitcoin each year.

Operational Strategy and Bitcoin Holdings

Eric Trump, co-founder and chief strategy officer, outlined the company’s focus. He said, “As bitcoin matures, the priority is clear: grow American-owned, professionally operated hashrate.” He added that this strategy will protect the network and support innovation in the United States.

Matt Prusak, president of American Bitcoin, described the firm’s mining approach. He said, “Every decision we make is oriented around maximizing Bitcoin accumulation.” The company reported that it mined bitcoin at a 53% discount to spot prices in the fourth quarter of 2025. During that period, bitcoin reached an all-time high above $126,000 in early October.

By year-end 2025, the firm reported revenue of $185.2 million. It posted a net loss of $153.2 million. The loss stemmed mainly from an unrealized $227.1 million loss on bitcoin holdings under fair value rules. The company closed the year with 5,401 bitcoin on its balance sheet.

American Bitcoin later reported holding 6,039 bitcoin valued at nearly $402 million. The company also posted a quarterly loss of $59.45 million. At recent prices near $68,000 per bitcoin, the projected annual output could generate about $35 million in gross revenue before costs.

Shares of American Bitcoin traded lower on Tuesday. The stock declined about 2.6% to $0.99 during trading. In later trading, the shares fell nearly 6% to below $0.96. Over the past month, the stock has dropped nearly 29%.

David Bailey, a former crypto advisor to the Trump administration, argues that the US government could be doing more to support Bitcoin adoption. 

“At the end of the day, liking Bitcoin is not enough,” Bailey said during the Bitcoin Investor Week Conference in New York, which was published to YouTube on Tuesday.

“The Trump administration was a very important first step, but you know there is so much further for us to go and not just in talk but in actual delivery,” said Bailey, who now serves as CEO and Chairman of KindlyMD, a Bitcoin treasury company. 

Bailey points to stalled Strategic Bitcoin Reserve plan

Trump repeatedly voiced his support for Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto industry during his presidential campaign appearances. 

While he signed an executive order for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in March 2025, it is understood that the US government has yet to begin accumulating Bitcoin outside of the funds seized through illicit activity. 

“We’re sitting here a year later, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was signed into an executive order,” Bailey said. 

“Last time I checked, we don’t even know how much Bitcoin we have exactly,” Bailey added. Data from Arkham Research shows it currently holds 378,372 Bitcoin, worth approximately $22.48 billion at the time of publication.

Just two months after Trump signed the executive order, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks said the process of accumulating wouldn’t be so straightforward, explaining that the US could buy more Bitcoin if the government could fund the purchase in a “budget-neutral” way, without a tax or adding to the growing national debt. 

Industry participants became more divided on the possibility as the year progressed. Some stayed optimistic. Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, said in September that there was a “strong chance” it would still happen before the end of 2025.

Bailey said that while Trump has been the first politician to champion “our worldview,” an opinion alone isn’t enough to drive Bitcoin’s price to $1 million. 

“Just because you like Bitcoin doesn’t mean that you’ve invested the political capital necessary for things to happen,” Bailey said.

“Unless you’re willing to bear the political capital necessary to mobilize the different gears necessary to move the ball forward, then at the end of the day, you can like Bitcoin, you cannot like Bitcoin, you’re going to get the same outcome achieved.”

Bitcoin will succeed either way, says Bailey

However, even without action from the US government, Bailey said Bitcoin will eventually succeed. “It’s not like we need the government to cater for us for Bitcoin to be successful,” Bailey said.

“Whether it’s four years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we will get to the point where we actually have a government that is conducive to the rules we need for Bitcoin to be successful,” he said.

Related: Bitcoin futures demand falls to 2024 lows: Are institutions exiting the market?

“I’m bullish on what we can accomplish in this administration. If we really want the progress to continue, we need more people to own Bitcoin every year,” Bailey said.

“We need more voters to own Bitcoin every year. And then it is just inevitable,” he added.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $68,220, approximately 45% below its October all-time high of $126,000, according to CoinMarketCap.

Outside the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Bitcoiners are eyeing the potential passage of the US CLARITY Act, which aims to provide the industry with more regulatory clarity. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that “the U.S. needs to get Market Structure done, ASAP.”

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