Elon Musk said late Tuesday that the payments features on social application X will go live next month.

Dubbed X Money, the feature turns X into a fintech app with peer-to-peer transfers, bank deposits, a debit card, cashback re

The platform is licensed in over 40 U.S. states through subsidiary X Payments and has Visa as a partner for account funding.

Dogecoin rallied as much as 8%, before reversing gains, after the annoucement despite it containing zero references to crypto. It hit nearly $0.10 over the past day before settling around $0.093, making it the best-performing major crypto over both 24-hour and seven-day periods.

The reflexive move reflects a pattern that has played out multiple times since 2021. Musk says something about X payments, and DOGE pumps on speculation he’ll integrate it.

Musk has called dogecoin his “favorite cryptocurrency” and Tesla accepted DOGE for merchandise in 2022. But X Money as described is a pure fiat product, with peer-to-peer transfers, bank linking, debit card. That’s closer to Venmo with a social media app attached, not a crypto wallet.

As such, X’s head of product Nikita Bier said in February that crypto trading tools would come to X through Smart Cashtags, but clarified the platform wouldn’t execute trades or act as a brokerage.

It would provide data and links that redirect users to exchanges. Musk recently reposted a third-party forecast of X Money’s future features that included “crypto integration,” but the company hasn’t confirmed anything.

The more interesting question for crypto markets isn’t whether DOGE gets added. It’s the 6% yield.

Six percent on a balance inside a social media app used by hundreds of millions of people is higher than virtually every U.S. savings account and competitive with money market funds. Whether it’s subsidized by X to drive adoption, generated by lending deposits, or backed by some other mechanism matters enormously for how regulators view it.

The timing collides with Congress fighting over the CLARITY Act, which would set rules for yield-bearing stablecoin products.

The Senate Banking Committee is targeting mid-to-late March for markup. The core policy question is whether non-bank platforms should be allowed to offer deposit-like yields to consumers.

X Money isn’t a stablecoin product, but it’s targeting the exact same consumer demand, people looking for better returns than their bank offers, through a different regulatory path.

If X Money launches at scale with 6% APY before the CLARITY Act passes, it creates an awkward comparison. A fiat fintech product inside a social media app gets to offer yields that crypto stablecoin products are being legislated out of.

Ethereum’s network activity has surged to all-time highs across multiple metrics, but the growth has failed to lift ether’s price or boost fee generation at the base layer.

A weekly report from analytics firm CryptoQuant published March 10 found that daily active addresses on Ethereum approached 2 million in February 2026, exceeding peaks seen during the 2021 bull market. Active addresses are unique blockchain wallet addresses that have sent or received a transaction within a specific timeframe, like the past 24 hours

Smart contract calls, or codes on blockchain telling it to do something specific, topped 40 million per day, and token transfers driven by internal contract interactions also set records. The findings point to broad adoption across DeFi, stablecoins and automated protocol activity, even as investment demand for ether has weakened.

Record network user activity typically bodes well for the market value of the blockchain’ native token. But that’s not the case with Ethereum.

It’s native token ether is down roughly 30% over the last six months, and the one-year change in Ethereum’s realized capitalization has turned negative, indicating net capital outflows from the market.

Exchange flow data from CryptoQuant shows ether moving to trading venues at a faster rate relative to bitcoin, a pattern consistent with elevated selling pressure.

Focus on capital flows

CryptoQuant argued that capital flows, rather than network activity, now explain ETH price dynamics more effectively.

In prior cycles, particularly 2018 and 2021, rising on-chain activity coincided with price rallies. That relationship has weakened. The firm’s scatter analysis showed recent observations clustering at high activity levels but relatively low prices, suggesting incremental usage growth now has less explanatory power for ether’s valuation.

The fee picture reinforces the disconnect. Data from DefiLlama shows Ethereum generated roughly $10.3 million in transaction fees over the past 30 days, placing it third behind Tron at nearly $25 million and Solana at about $20 million.

On a revenue basis, the gap widens further. Ethereum ranked fifth in 30-day protocol revenue at $1.22 million, trailing Tron as well as Polygon, Base and Solana. Base, an Ethereum layer-2 network built by Coinbase, generated roughly three times Ethereum’s protocol revenue over the same period.

The disparity reflects the growing role of Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem. Networks such as Base and Polygon process large volumes of transactions while paying relatively small settlement costs back to the base chain, distributing economic activity across the broader Ethereum ecosystem rather than concentrating it on the base layer.

Stablecoins remain a bright spot for adoption. Ethereum hosts approximately $162 billion in stablecoin supply, roughly 52% of the global market, according to DefiLlama. Yet that activity has not translated into proportional value capture for ether itself.

Ethereum may be busier than ever, but the blockchain’s native asset is capturing less of the value created on top of it.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest public holder of Bitcoin, sold a record amount of its perpetual preferred equity, Stretch (STRC), after amending its sales rules on Monday.

Strategy is estimated to have bought 1,420 Bitcoin (BTC) in a single day after selling roughly 2.4 million STRC shares through its at-the-market (ATM) program, according to data from STRC.live. The amount marks the largest estimated daily issuance of STRC and BTC purchases, surpassing the previous record of 1,069 BTC, according to a Monday X post from STRC.live.

Strategy announced a major rule change to its at-the-market (ATM) share sales program on Monday, allowing a second agent to sell the securities before the US market opens and after it closes, easing a prior restriction limiting such sales to one agent per trading day.

STRC is one of the major pillars of Strategy’s Bitcoin buying

STRC is Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, launched in July 2025 as one of several securities the company uses to help fund its Bitcoin treasury strategy, alongside other ATM programs such as Stride (STRD), Strife (STRF), Strike (STRK) and common stock (MSTR). Strategy says the stock pays monthly variable cash dividends, with the annualized rate for March set at 11.5%.

Some market observers said the updated sales structure could make it easier for Strategy to issue stock more efficiently during premarket and after-hours trading, potentially accelerating future capital raises tied to Bitcoin purchases.

“A lot more capital will be raised, and a lot more Bitcoin will be purchased,” market observer Ragnar said.

According to STRC.live, last week’s estimate suggested STRC proceeds would fund a weekly purchase of approximately 4,300 BTC ($303 million). However, the actual purchase exceeded expectations, as Strategy reported selling around $378 million in STRC in its filing with the SEC on Monday.

Related: Oil tumbles, crypto gains as Trump sends mixed signals over Iran war

The company reported a massive $1.3 billion BTC purchase, marking one of its largest Bitcoin acquisitions on record. Common stock MSTR accounted for the largest proceeds in reported sales, generating nearly $900 million in proceeds.

The results for STRC underscore ongoing rapid acceleration in investor interest, despite the Bitcoin price trading below Strategy’s reported average cost basis of $75,862.

Magazine: The debate over Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is over: Benjamin Cowen