In an interview with CoinDesk, the lead engineer at Firedancer gives an update on how the new client, also known as a software, is fairing in the Solana ecosystem.

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TLDR:

• Stablecoin payment volume reached $400B in 2025, with 60% of transactions driven by B2B activity.
• Bridge covers 35 countries but holds zero local rail presence in APAC, exposing critical coverage gaps.
• Conduit operates at roughly 10 bps on FX, compared to Bridge’s fee of up to 1% per transaction.
• Fasset hit $32B annualized across 50-plus corridors after securing a $51M Series B funding round.

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Stablecoin payment volume reached $400 billion in 2025, with 60% driven by B2B transactions. Yet many fintechs still rely on a single US-based provider to cover global corridors.

The reality is that stablecoin infrastructure has splintered into regional specialists, each with deep local rail integrations, mobile money networks, and central bank relationships.

For cross-border operators, knowing who controls each corridor is now more critical than ever.

Regional Players Are Outpacing US-Centric APIs

The stablecoin orchestration landscape has shifted dramatically over the past three years. What once existed as a few US-based APIs has grown into a dense network of regional operators.

Each corridor now has its own pure-play infrastructure, built by teams with firsthand knowledge of local payment realities.

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In Europe, MiCA-native providers like BVNK are processing $30 billion annualized. That figure reflects how quickly regulated regional operators have gained ground.

Meanwhile, in Latin America, providers like Bitso and dLocal have built around local systems such as PIX and SPEI.

As industry observer Gaspard Lezin noted on X, “every major payment corridor has its own pure-play, built by people who actually understand local rails, mobile money, central bank relationships, and FX realities on the ground.”

The $400B Map: Who’s Actually Moving Stablecoins Outside the US?

If you only know Bridge, you’re seeing a fraction of the market.

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Real-world stablecoin payment volume hit $400B in 2025, with 60% being B2B. Bridge covers 35 countries. The math doesn’t work and yet most fintechs… pic.twitter.com/VoGMs3g4Pa

— Gap | Suby (@gaspardlezin) May 15, 2026

Africa presents a strong case for mobile money-stablecoin integration. Providers like Yellow Card, Conduit, and Kotani Pay are operating where traditional banking infrastructure remains thin. Conduit alone covers 23 African countries, offering substantially lower fees than global competitors.

Cost and Coverage Gaps Are Driving the Shift

Fee structures are one of the clearest reasons businesses are moving away from single-provider models. Bridge charges up to 1% on FX transactions, while Conduit operates at approximately 10 basis points. That difference compounds significantly at scale for B2B treasury teams.

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Coverage gaps are equally telling. Bridge, which covers 35 countries, has no local rail presence in APAC. By contrast, StraitsX has processed roughly $30 billion in cumulative volume across Asia.

Fasset recently hit $32 billion annualized across 50-plus corridors in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East following its $51 million Series B.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Reap was acquired by Kraken for $600 million, further validating the region’s growth trajectory. FOMO Pay, Triple-A, and PhotonPay are also operating with deepening local integrations across the region.

For businesses managing multi-corridor supplier payments, the practical answer is a regional stack. A B2B treasury team paying suppliers across Lagos, São Paulo, Jakarta, and Dubai requires different infrastructure in each market.

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Aggregation layers like Borderless.xyz are emerging to stitch these regional providers into a single API, reducing operational complexity without sacrificing local depth.

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Several of Wall Street’s most-watched billionaires converged on a single conviction trade in their Q1 2026 13F filings. Bill Ackman, David Tepper, and other managers each boosted their stakes in Amazon (AMZN).

The disclosures show the e-commerce and cloud platform topping multiple hedge fund books. Amazon emerged as the most repeated overweight name across major filings.

Ackman and Tepper Lead the Amazon Add

Pershing Square added 1.84 million Amazon shares in the first quarter. The buy lifted Ackman’s position by roughly 19%, according to the fund’s filing.

Amazon now sits among its largest disclosed holdings alongside Brookfield, Uber, and a newly initiated Microsoft stake.

David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management nearly doubled its Amazon position during the quarter. The 98% increase made the stock the firm’s largest disclosed equity holding, valued at roughly $900 million.

The fund also boosted Uber by 242% and added to Taiwan Semiconductor while trimming Nvidia, Alphabet, and Alibaba.

Hedge funds run by Daniel Loeb, Seth Klarman, and Chase Coleman also list Amazon among their top US holdings.

The overlap reinforces a shared positioning theme. Amazon’s appeal rests on resilient e-commerce cash flow, AWS cloud demand tied to AI buildouts, and accelerating digital ad revenue.

AI and Quality Names Anchor the Rest

Beyond Amazon, the filings show a broader tilt toward AI-adjacent platforms and durable compounders. Tepper, Coleman, and Loeb hold Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Taiwan Semiconductor.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made an outsized purchase of Alphabet and trimmed its Bank of America stake. Bill Gates and Chris Hohn cluster in industrials, railways, and quality payments names like Visa.

The 13F snapshots lag by 45 days. They also exclude options, short positions, and non-US holdings, so consensus reads should be paired with live price action.

Notwithstanding, the Amazon trade persisting into Q2 hinges on cloud capex guidance and advertising trends. The broader rotation between AI growth and value names also matters.

The post Wall Street Billionaires Make Amazon Their Top AI Trade appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Having worked across blockchain and digital asset ecosystems since 2015, Yaroslav Ivanov, Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of ALTA Blockchain Labs, has witnessed crypto evolve from a niche movement into a sector increasingly intertwined with global finance, a shift that became especially evident at Consensus Miami 2026.

Ivanov is a strategic executive working closely with Web3 founders through ALTA Blockchain Labs, advising on tokenization and liquidity strategy, go-to-market execution, and ecosystem development. 

Through his work with both founders and institutional investors, he observes how capital flows and builder sentiment evolve across market cycles. The event brought together senior voices from digital assets, banking, asset management, technology, and policy, with ALTA Blockchain Labs participating as a media and community partner of Consensus 2026.

ALTA sits at the layer where Web3 projects transition into broader liquidity markets.

For Ivanov, the atmosphere showed how much the industry has changed. The early crypto conference image of retail excitement, experimental culture, and chaotic builder energy was still visible, but it no longer defined the room.

The strongest presence came from banks, asset managers, public companies, policy voices, and technology providers speaking about tokenization, regulated settlement, stablecoins, and institutional adoption.

“The scale and institutional presence this year is impressive,” Ivanov said. “It reflects how seriously global finance is beginning to treat digital assets.”

The Rise of Institutional Crypto

Crypto’s new audience is more formal, more corporate, and more connected to existing financial power.

The Wall Street Journal captured this mood in its coverage of Consensus Miami, describing a more corporate atmosphere at the event, with representatives from major banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

Its phrase “Lamborghinis Out, Suits In” pointed to a visible cultural change around one of crypto’s biggest annual gatherings.

For Ivanov, this creates a more complicated question than simple “maturity.” Institutional adoption brings capital, legitimacy, liquidity, and a larger market. It also forces the industry to decide which parts of its original culture deserve protection.

Crypto was built around distrust of concentrated financial control. Today, many institutions once skeptical of digital assets are entering the sector with large balance sheets, regulated products, and established client networks.

“Institutional influence over crypto is inevitable,” Ivanov said. “The key is to preserve the authenticity of decentralization and the mission laid out by Satoshi.”

Adoption Brings Pressure

Crypto’s institutional phase can support growth, but adoption alone does not preserve openness, self-custody, or permissionless innovation.

A market can grow while its original purpose becomes less visible.

This tension ran through Consensus 2026, where tokenized securities, stablecoin settlement, bank-grade custody, regulatory alignment, and institutional distribution dominated many discussions.

Meanwhile, at side events, founder meetings, informal gatherings, and community conversations around Miami still focused on networks, applications, user ownership, and mass participation outside traditional finance.

The result was a collision between two versions of the same industry.

Bullish Brings Public Equity Onchain

One of the strongest examples came from Bullish. During Consensus Miami 2026, the company announced plans to let shareholders hold BLSH ordinary shares as tokens on Solana. Bullish described the launch as the first full tokenization of an NYSE-listed company’s equity cap table, administered by Equiniti, its SEC-registered transfer agent.

This gave the institutional conversation a concrete example. Tokenization now reaches public-company ownership records, transfer agents, shareholder visibility, settlement timing, and regulated market operations.

For founders, it validates blockchain as a technology for financial markets. It also shows how quickly crypto language can be absorbed into institutional design.

Solana and the Speed of Open Networks

Solana’s presence at Consensus added another angle to the same discussion. Ivanov met with Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-Founder of Solana Labs, during the event.

Yakovenko’s public comments at Consensus focused on the advantages global blockchain networks may have over companies built around regulated domestic markets. He made the point that crypto-native teams operate globally and can adapt faster than firms tied to legacy market structures.

This idea sits close to the heart of the current debate. Traditional finance is entering crypto because the technology has become too useful to ignore. Crypto-native networks still move faster because they were built with different assumptions from legacy finance.

The next stage of competition may be more about open networks challenging the operating models of traditional markets.

The Builder Spirit Around the Edges

Consensus 2026 showed an industry large enough for major institutions to take seriously, but still young enough for its future to remain unsettled.

Institutional finance wants efficiency, settlement speed, new products, and access to tokenized markets. Crypto-native founders still speak about sovereignty, user ownership, transparency, and global participation.

The risk for crypto is that institutional language becomes the dominant language of success. If the industry measures progress only through ETFs, tokenized cap tables, bank partnerships, and regulated liquidity, the users and builders who carried crypto through earlier years are more easily overlooked.

At the same time, institutional participation brings distribution, compliance experience, and liquidity. These forces can make digital assets easier to use globally. The challenge is accepting institutional growth while preserving crypto’s independent foundation.

Crypto Enters Wall Street’s Room

Consensus Miami 2026 did not resolve the tension between institutional adoption and crypto’s original builder culture, but it did make it harder to ignore. 

For Ivanov, the most important lesson came from the contrast between the official program and the surrounding community. Inside the main venue, crypto looked increasingly like a financial market industry.

Around the edges, the original builder spirit remained alive through side events, founder conversations, and communities still focused on open participation.

This contrast may define the next era of digital assets. Crypto has, indeed, entered the room with Wall Street. 

The post Yaroslav Ivanov at Consensus 2026: Crypto’s Institutional Era Became Impossible to Ignore appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Starbucks (SBUX) has compounded roughly 40,000% since its 1992 IPO, turning a $10,000 ticket into close to $4 million.

On Friday, the company that built that record told 300 more corporate workers they were out, took a $400 million restructuring charge, and watched the stock rise anyway. Wall Street called it the right move.

A 408x Run Built on a $5 Habit

Starbucks went public on June 26, 1992, at $17 per share. After six 2-for-1 stock splits, that adjusts to roughly $0.26. The stock closed Friday near $106.79, pushing its market cap to about $121.7 billion.

Pure price-to-earnings now runs around 408 times the IPO level, before the 2.32% dividend yield is even factored in.

To put that in numbers a crypto trader can feel, Bitcoin would need to roughly 400x from today’s price to match what Starbucks has already done.

The compounding survived the 2008 crash, the pandemic shutdowns and the 2022 inflation shocks. It also survived two CEO transitions and a multi-year same-store sales slump.

SBUX is up 26% year to date in 2026, the latest reminder that boring assets sometimes outrun the flashy ones and that the crypto-versus-stocks debate rarely ends the way Twitter expects.

The Turnaround Behind the New Record

Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan finally showed up in the numbers last month. Q2 FY26 revenue rose 9% to $9.53 billion, beating consensus.

Global same-store sales jumped 6.2%, with North America up 7.1% on a 4.4% lift in transactions. It was the first quarter in more than 2 years when both the top and bottom lines grew.

Management raised full-year guidance to at least 5% same-store sales growth, up from a prior 3% target, and reaffirmed plans for 600 to 650 net new coffeehouses in fiscal 2026.

The global footprint now exceeds 41,000 stores. A China joint-venture sale separately freed up roughly $3.1 billion in cash, the kind of quiet infrastructure play that crypto keeps trying to imitate.

The Layoffs Wall Street Cheered

On May 15, Starbucks said it would cut 300 US corporate roles in marketing, human resources, and supply chain functions and shut some regional support offices. Coffeehouse staff are not affected.

The move will trigger $400 million in restructuring charges, including a $280 million write-down on long-term assets and $120 million in cash severance.

It is Niccol’s third corporate cut since taking the job, and Jim Cramer framed it on CNBC as a setup play.

“He has said over and over again that he’s got to right-size. This is it. He’s getting it done,” CNBC reported, citing Cramer.

The market is still pricing SBUX at roughly 81 times earnings, a multiple that assumes the compounding machine keeps running.

The next leg of public-market consumer stories, which has now matched the last 34 years, hinges on whether Niccol’s margin reset turns into real offense or just another expensive defense of an already bid-up name.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch leaders and journalists provide expert insights

The post A $5 Coffee Habit Compounded 40,000% Yet Wall Street Still Cheers the Layoffs appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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DeFi insurance protocols debuted with huge ambitions during the 2020 crypto boom. But as hacks evolved and users chased yields over protection, most of the sector collapsed under the same risks it was built to cover.

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Kevin Warsh, nominee for US Federal Reserve Chair, testifies during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on his nomination on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 21, 2026.

Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images

If new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh is still itching for a “good family fight” over monetary policy, he is likely to get one if he sticks to his guns on interest rate cuts.

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With inflation spiking and Treasury yields surging, Warsh is likely to confront a Federal Open Market Committee in no mood to ease. In fact, several officials of late have stressed the need for the Fed to keep its options open for rate hikes ahead.

If it looked like outgoing Governor Stephen Miran was a lone wolf howling for reductions, seeing a Fed chair trying to defy his fellow policymakers and push for cuts will loom even larger.

Those who have watched Warsh over the years, from his prior stint as a Fed governor through his high-profile public disagreements with Fed policy since, expect him to put up strong arguments for cutting. The problem is, he’s likely to lose at least in the short term, a situation that sets up some interesting communication issues for the new central bank leader.

“I saw him in action. He does base his decisions on his view of the economy, and even his arguments for why he would favor rate decreases in general were based on his read of what’s happening structurally in the economy,” said former Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, who served with the Philadelphia Fed during the prior period when Warsh was on the board. “I just don’t think right now he can make those arguments in a credible way, because we have an inflation problem.”

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Indeed, surging inflation will be Warsh’s first and primary policy challenge.

Officially, Warsh has echoed much of the Trump administration’s position on the current run of price surges — mainly that they are temporary and will fade once the fighting in Iran ceases and various disinflationary forces, such as increased productivity, take over.

However, those arguments face a tougher audience now with inflation levels at multi-year highs.

Warsh made the “family fight” remarks during his Senate confirmation hearing, a remark, along with other caustic comments he’s made about the Fed, that central bank observers privately say could come back to haunt him.

Rampant dissent

At the most recent meeting, in late April, three members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s rate-setting arm, voted against the policy statement.

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The vote homed in on one sentence in the missive that investors took to imply that the next move would be a cut: “In considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will carefully assess incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

However, it is just that disagreement that could allow Warsh to put a quick imprint on the Fed. By convincing the balance of the other 11 FOMC voters to remove it, he would further his oft-stated disdain for such “forward guidance” while also rallying the panel around a common objective, namely to preserve optionality for future moves.

“You get plenty of contrarian thinking in there. Kevin Warsh is a very fortunate man in his experience. Family fights generally lead to constructive outcomes,” said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP and a leading voice in internal Fed machinations.

“On the one hand, he can present this as not a tightening signal, just a shift to more agnostic communications framework,” he added. “There is a PR element that would be helpful to him. He doesn’t have to say that the committee forced his hand in his first meeting to go to an effectively more restrictive stance.”

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Warsh’s problems would be far from over, though.

Facing the president

President Donald Trump nominated the new chair with clear statements that he expected lower interest rates. Should Warsh fail to deliver, it could set up the same kind of relationship Trump had with outgoing Chair Jerome Powell: a perpetual clash that saw frequent personal attacks and ultimately involved the Justice Department, as well as a historically unprecedented level of discord between the administration and central bank.

So might Warsh be left to present the decision of the committee, then state in his post-meeting news conference that he disagreed and tried but failed to persuade his cohorts to vote for a cut?

Not likely, say those familiar with inner FOMC workings, primarily because it would serve to further undercut Warsh’s credibility.

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“That would undermine his power as chair. Part of the job of chair is you get the committee to reach a consensus.” said Mester, the former Cleveland president.

While there’s a perception that Fed officials enter the meeting room and then hash out positions, Mester, who served in various capacities at the Fed from 1985 until 2024, said it doesn’t really work that way.

“Chair Powell and the chairs before him, Ben [Bernanke] and Janet [Yellen], they both made a point of calling each participant right before the meeting so they would know where people are,” she said. “The driving towards consensus is part and parcel of the setup of the FOMC.”

Making the case

Former Governor Miran, who leaves the board with Warsh’s arrival, said in a Bloomberg News interview earlier in the week that “it’s important to understand that people at the Fed are responsive to arguments.” Though he voted against each of the rate decisions at the six meetings he attended, Miran noted that other officials “started to respond” to his contrarian arguments “but it takes time.”

Those who worked with Warsh say he’s up to the job, despite less-than-ideal circumstances surrounding the current Fed climate.

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In addition to basic matters of rates, the new chair faces additional communications challenges.

He has spoken out not only against providing guidance, but also the Fed’s vaunted “dot plot” of individual officials’ rate expectations and even has shown misgivings about hosting news conferences after each meeting, a process that Powell began that deviated from the prior practice of quarterly meetings with the press.

Bill English, former head of monetary affairs at the Fed and now a professor at Yale, served with Warsh and deemed him “good at working with people, and I think he’ll try to find a reasonable consensus” among the myriad issues ahead.

“At least from what I saw years ago when he was a governor, he just doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who’s going to want to pick a fight with the committee,” English said. “My guess is he’s going to want to continue to be a chair who’s going to try to find consensus and move the committee over time with arguments and with data.”

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There has been a lot of talk about an impending XRP breakout lately as the asset has been stuck in a relatively tight range since the early February crash.

Although each attempt has been met with immediate selling pressure, analysts are still hopeful that the token will overcome its most crucial resistance levels soon and head toward new peaks.

The Levels XRP Has to Surpass

In May alone, the cross-border token has already initiated three consecutive attempts to escape the captivity of its own consolidation. Although it was stopped almost instantly after each try, the good news is that it managed to mark higher highs before the subsequent rejections.

On May 6, it went from under $1.40 to $1.45 before it dumped back down to its starting point. However, it kept grinding and soared past $1.50 last Sunday before the bears stepped up once again. It managed to remain above $1.42, and Thursday’s attempt pushed it north to a two-month high of $1.55 before it was halted once again.

According to popular analyst EGRAG CRYPTO, XRP needs to overcome two major resistance levels before it goes on a more profound and sustainable run. The first is the one that stopped it in May at $1.51. If it falls, the second is located at $1.82, a level not seen since late January.

If the bulls managed to push XRP decisively above those lines, it would solidify the asset’s transition into a bullish Wave 5 expansion within the Elliott Wave structure. The analyst added that the most challenging parts of Elliott Wave are “NEVER Wave 3 or Wave 5;” instead, they point to fake breakouts, deep retracements, emotional traps, and complex structures.

“But once the correction is identified correctly: Wave 3 and Wave 5 become the easiest and most powerful moves to capitalize on,” EGRAG concluded.

We Still Play Range

Crypto Tony also mentioned XRP’s range between $1,30 and $1.55, in which the asset has remained for the past three and a half months. The analyst said he can look for more exposure once the asset breaks out in either direction, but until then, he will keep playing this range.

Fellow analyst CW added that XRP has liquidated a lot of short positions on its way up on Thursday, while the size of longs is “not large.” This would provide a more sustainable price rally structure if high-leveraged positions remain low.

Almost short positions in $XRP have been liquidated.

In addition, the size of long positions is not large. Most high-leverage positions in the $XRP futures market have been liquidated. pic.twitter.com/3WFZA0xMN3

— CW (@CW8900) May 15, 2026

The post XRP’s Next Bullish Wave Depends on These Crucial Price Levels: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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