Sentiment in crypto has dived lower than a snailfish in the Mariana Trench in recent months.

Miners are capitulating to AI, cold wallets are getting exploited, and you can hardly fire up LinkedIn without reading another message from a newly unemployed crypto journalist searching for new opportunities. Even for an industry that’s endured nation-state bans, exchange blowups, and years of regulatory pressure, morale has rarely felt this low.

With business models failing and public interest dropping, many long-term crypto fans have begun to question whether we’ve all wasted a decade of our lives on a pipe dream.

Source: Ash Crypto

Until the price went up, that is.

Bitcoin has just seen its best August in years with a 26% return, while Ethereum gained 34%. President Trump even sang the praises of a decentralized offshore perpetual futures venue at the White House. Crypto’s finally getting interesting again.

But a short-term price rise doesn’t mean all our dreams have come true. For anyone who spent years advocating for sovereign F-you money outside the control of the state and centralized entities, a custodial ETF is not exactly a version of BTC that sticks it to the man.

And there’s another problem with calling this a victory lap: many of the companies that helped build crypto’s foundations are no longer around to enjoy the latest pump.

Take BitMEX, one of the industry’s first Bitcoin futures exchanges that pioneered the perpetual swap and 100x leverage for degens. It’s shutting down operations in September after 11 years.

Former chief executive Stephan Lutz tells Magazine that BitMEX was a victim of its own success.

“Every legitimate crypto exchange is using the perpetual swap… every legitimate crypto exchange uses the funding mechanism to bring longs and shorts together that the founders invented originally… That isn’t going away… It’s just not a differentiating factor anymore.”

So what if crypto won — just not in the way we thought it would?

Crypto’s impact means it wasn’t a waste of time

Lutz doesn’t think crypto can simply disappear anymore because the technology has become too deeply embedded in traditional finance to be unwound.

“From my point of view, we passed the point of no return,” he says.

Utkarsh Ahuja, founder of Moon Pursuit Capital, agrees that crypto proponents have not wasted their lives, and points to the industry’s impact on payment rails, settlement and tokenization.

Stablecoins, he says, can have a “very, very lasting impact” as they become integrated into financial payment infrastructure, and “you can literally tokenize anything.”

Related: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized… including farts

He points to crypto’s spillover into energy, healthcare and AI, arguing that the technology is being widely used beyond the industry that created it.

Decentralized finance has also made a meaningful impact on the world and is now closer to infrastructure, than an experiment. Wanja Oberhof, chief executive of Subsquid Labs, tells Magazine:

“DeFi built the first financial system where you don’t have to trust the operator’s word: you can verify the ledger yourself, in real time, down to every transaction.”

Settlement happens in minutes rather than days, he says, while markets run 24/7 and lending protocols can clear billions transparently:

“No bank consortium ever shipped anything like it. DeFi removed the intermediary and kept the market.”

But while DeFi’s infrastructure has greatly improved, Oberhof concedes the industry “over-promised on timelines and under-delivered on user experience.”

He says the real win will come when the technology “disappears into products people use without thinking about it.”

Institutions are adopting blockchain technology like crazy, and tokenized funds, stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement are no longer ideas confined to the hallways of crypto conferences.

But crypto isn’t so much replacing the financial system as being absorbed by it.

The crypto industry’s success is a key reason it no longer feels as exciting or impactful. The more TradFi becomes involved, the more boring crypto seems, especially when compared to the days when the Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp back in December 2017 and the stock price surged 500%. (It was delisted two months later for misleading the market).

Ether printed a God candle on Aug. 22. Source: Lark Davis

Regulation has also made crypto much more legitimate but duller at the same time.

The EU has implemented its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA). The US has gone from treating crypto largely as a regulatory headache to building a framework around it. Senators may even pass the CLARITY act one day.

What did we lose along the way?

Despite increasing legitimacy, the crypto industry has failed to deliver on many things it promised. Dentacoin failed to revolutionize the dental industry. Bitcoin did not stop all wars. Ethereum is not the default home for global finance (at least, not yet.) Ahuja says:

“Has it delivered enough? Not yet, in my opinion. But has it changed our perception completely? Yes, it has.”

The audience has changed too.

Crypto is no longer some fringe hobby for a tiny band of libertarian cypherpunks and meme-weilding frog armies on Crypto Twitter.

Around one in five American adults, or 19%, now says they have invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency, according to Pew Research Center.

Broader ownership hasn’t made crypto easier to use. In fact, the explosion of assets and platforms has made the market harder to navigate. Users have to contemplate multiple networks, wallets, exchanges, bridges and onramps, creating the extra layers of friction that crypto was supposed to eliminate.

One in five Americans has used crypto. Source: Pew Research Center

Ahuja points to another irony: an asset class designed to be borderless is increasingly being shaped by national regulatory regimes, making it harder to move seamlessly across jurisdictions.

One Dubai-based crypto user Magazine spoke with receives their salary every month into a large centralized crypto exchange. They say they lose money when converting USDT into local currency, and then have to pay a flat 75 AED fee (roughly 20 USD) just to withdraw. They say:

“I wish I could receive a bank transfer instead.”

And then there’s the most basic promise of all: self-custody, arguably the biggest paradox the industry faces because the more valuable Bitcoin becomes, the more dangerous it is to hold your own private keys — whether for fear of being bludgeoned to death by a wrench or having your cold wallet exploited by an AI agent.

Arguably it’s this failure to deliver the future crypto once promised, that has made the bear market shutdowns and closures hit even harder.

Related: MiCA is coming for DeFi vaults, but regulation will be difficult

Layoffs are rampant throughout the industry. Projects that survived even the grizzly 2022 bear market have been shutting down this year, or being forced to reinvent themselves as the money and users pivot to AI — which is newer but has seen adoption crypto can only dream of so far.

Lutz doesn’t see BitMEX’s fate as evidence that the technology failed; quite the opposite: the technology worked so well that everyone copied it, and the industry has moved from a race to invent the infrastructure to a brutal fight over market share. He says:

“Now the differentiating factor is your aggressiveness in the competition, which is a completely different game. Some play that very well, others don’t.”

Perhaps the companies and projects that built crypto were never going to be the ones that ultimately benefited most from its adoption.

So have we wasted our lives?

Well, the purists may not have gotten their sovereign money, the early companies may not have survived, and the average user may still be waiting to catch a break.

But the technology is here, the infrastructure is becoming the rails, and the 20% daily candles sure are fun to watch.

And one thing that’s always been true, when the price starts going up, the narratives change quickly to explain why it may keep going up forever.

Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

Japan’s JGB yield now at 30-year high 

Global long-term bond yields are now at the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis as major long-dated sovereign bonds continued to sell off into trading on Tuesday.

The sell off comes only days after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made headlines by announcing that the maximum size of debt buyback transactions would be increased to $4 billion from September.  

While the Treasury does not conduct monetary policy, some commentators have compared this to a form of yield curve control. This has brought the debasement narrative, keenly followed by Bitcoin and precious metal investors, back into the spotlight. 

Japan’s 10-year government bond yield surged to 3% for the first time since 1996 on Tuesday, while the 30-year JGB yield topped a record 4.18%. The 10-year US bond yield also surged to a new multi-year high and stands at 4.78% at the time of writing.

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10-Year Japanese government bond. Source: TradingView 

Officials in both countries face a mutual bind with respect to the Japanese yen: Tokyo can neither raise policy rates without incurring an operating loss that ultimately hits the Finance ministry, nor repatriate capital without divesting the Treasury securities on which Washington’s financing depends.

Industry commentators such as Arthur Hayes have argued for years that the Fed will eventually use its Foreign and International Monetary Authorities (FIMA) repo facility. Through this swap line, Japan’s Finance ministry could borrow dollars against its Treasury holdings and sell them for yen, strengthening the currency without causing an imminent sovereign bond crisis.

This mechanism would create new dollar liquidity, which is why Hayes recommends positioning in Bitcoin (BTC), gold and crypto. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at the future use of the FIMA facility in August.

Rising long-term yields may be the first sign that Hayes’s scenario is being priced in. Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution commented on X: “For the past two years, Japan has been in a “Liz Truss” bond market crisis whereby its currency falls even as government bond yields go ever higher. We’ve never had a major G10 sovereign experience something like this and it’s deeply destabilizing…”

10-year interest swap rate and trade-weighted JPY.
Source: Robin Brooks on X.com

Bitcoin continues sideways movement

In the face of Tuesday’s bond sell-off, Bitcoin has been trading sideways near the $78,000 mark, following a minor corrective decline from its morning high close to $79,000.

Cointelegraph previously reported on a thick patch of resistance between the current spot price and $86,000. This has slowed Bitcoin’s upside momentum despite positive news and renewed interest in the debasement trade. 

Related: Bitcoin faces true demand test above $83K as liquidity thickens: Glassnode

Overall sentiment across recent reports remains mixed to cautiously optimistic in the short term after the strong August recovery, with the $76,000-$82,000 range as the key battleground for the coming weeks.

S&P 500 index futures sold off by 0.3% on Tuesday and the gauge now hovers around 7,660, the lowest level since Aug. 4. This comes as tensions in the Iran war flare up once more. Oil prices rose more than 2%, with WTI around $88 per barrel and Brent above $92, fueled by renewed US-Iran fighting, including strikes, tanker incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, and comments from President Donald Trump.

S&P 500 out-of-hours futures. Source: X.com

Ripple and SettleMint unveiled a new partnership on September 1. The deal merges custody, issuance, and lifecycle management into a single platform. Traditional finance firms now gain a simpler path toward digital asset adoption.

A Unified Platform for Institutions

SettleMint announced the collaboration in an official statement this week. The partnership links Ripple Custody with SettleMint’s Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform, known as DALP. Together, the two systems aim to accelerate tokenization adoption across the Asia Pacific region.

Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director for Asia Pacific, explained the strategic thinking behind the move. Institutions want to deploy digital assets without juggling separate systems for custody and governance. The combined platform gives them one foundation to build on and expand later.

Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, echoed that view in his own remarks. He described global capital markets as shifting fully on-chain in the current moment. As a result, custody and lifecycle management must now function as a single system rather than two.

Ripple’s Broader Institutional Strategy

Ripple continues to expand its custody infrastructure through several additional partnerships. The company has deepened ties with Securosys, Figment, and Chainalysis in recent months. These integrations aim to simplify how institutions secure digital assets, stablecoins, and real-world assets.

Ripple also plans to roll out the XRP Ledger v3.3.0 upgrade soon. The upgrade places tokenized real-world assets at the center of its roadmap. This step reflects Ripple’s wider strategy to court institutional capital through infrastructure improvements.

XRP itself traded higher following the announcement, rising more than one percent within 24 hours. The token moved between $1.36 and $1.40 during that window. Trading volume fell 16 percent, yet CME futures open interest still surpassed figures on Binance.

Regulatory Momentum Fuels Sector Growth

The partnership arrives as regulators reshape the tokenization landscape inside the United States. The SEC introduced tokenization innovation exemptions under the current administration this year. These changes encourage more institutions to seriously explore blockchain-based asset management.

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation also plans to launch its own tokenization service. That rollout is scheduled for October and adds further momentum to the sector. Multiple major players now compete to serve rising institutional demand for on-chain assets.

Financial firms increasingly need compliant infrastructure to manage complex ledger configurations safely. Custody providers must now handle growing volumes of tokenized assets without added risk. The Ripple-SettleMint partnership positions both companies to meet that rising demand directly.

Institutions across Asia Pacific stand to benefit most from this streamlined approach. Rather than managing multiple vendors, banks can now consolidate custody and issuance functions. This consolidation may lower operational costs while improving oversight of digital asset holdings.

The tokenization market continues to grow as traditional finance embraces blockchain technology further. Partnerships like this one signal a maturing industry ready for institutional-scale adoption. Ripple and SettleMint now join a growing list of firms building that infrastructure together.

Ethena has launched a global money app built around its USDe synthetic dollar, expanding the crypto-native asset into everyday payments, savings and cross-border transfers.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, the self-custodial Ethena Pay app allows users to hold USDe through a dollar-denominated balance, earn as much as 6% in annualized rewards and spend funds through a payment card, while supporting fiat onramps.

The beta rollout includes 48 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and other regions, though the initial rollout is limited to 400 users, with access set to expand weekly, Ethena said in a Tuesday thread on X. Avalanche will serve as the exclusive settlement layer for payments and transfers.

Source: Ethena

Users can deposit fiat or crypto, with funds converted into USDe (USDe). The app enables using IBAN details to move money to and from external bank accounts into local currencies. MoonPay-owned Iron provides backend infrastructure.

Ethena Pay is not initially available in the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan or South Korea, though Ethena expects to expand into those markets during the beta, subject to regulatory approval.

Related: Chelsea FC gets a stablecoin sponsor after UK FCA warning to clubs

Ethena’s USDe grows as ENA rallies

Ethena is an Ethereum-based protocol behind USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to maintain its value near $1 without relying on traditional banking infrastructure.

USDe uses crypto collateral alongside hedging strategies, including derivatives positions, to help maintain its peg. The asset has grown to a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion, making it the sixth-largest stablecoin, according to DefiLlama data.

USDe market cap. Source: DefiLlama

Ethena also operates ENA, the protocol’s governance token, which has a market capitalization of roughly $1.5 billion. The token has rallied sharply over the past month, gaining about 68%, but remains well below its previous highs.

On Friday, the Ethena Foundation proposed directing 95% of the net revenue it receives from Ethena’s core businesses toward ENA buybacks once USDe’s circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. ENA rose more than 10% following the proposal and gained 27% over the week.

The token recorded about $595 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours, up 16% from the previous day, and was trading around $0.16 on Tuesday, according to CoinGecko.

Magazine: Does the Bitcoin rally mean we haven’t wasted our lives in crypto?

A group of 21 major financial institutions plans to establish a new company to develop and issue stablecoins, offering another sign of traditional finance’s push into digital dollars as regulatory frameworks take shape.

The consortium, announced Tuesday, includes Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, MUFG and Fidelity Investments. It plans to launch a US dollar-denominated stablecoin in the first half of 2027, subject to the company’s formation and other conditions.

According to the announcement, the group ultimately plans to expand into stablecoins denominated in other G7 currencies, with a euro offering identified as its next priority.

The consortium said its stablecoin will target wholesale, institutional and retail markets, including use cases such as cross-border payments and digital asset settlement. The initiative is intended to comply with both the US GENIUS Act and the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), where applicable.

The venture builds on an initiative announced last October, when an initial group of 10 banks said they were exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money available on public blockchains. The consortium has since more than doubled in size, bringing together financial institutions across North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Related: Kast launches stablecoin-powered business platform after $80M raise

Banks deepen push into stablecoins

The move comes as stablecoins have grown considerably in recent years, with the passage of the GENIUS Act and MiCA creating clearer regulatory pathways for adoption.

Elsewhere, Singapore is considering allowing jointly issued cross-border stablecoins into its regulatory regime, according to a Tuesday announcement, revisiting its earlier decision to restrict the framework to domestic issuance.

Institutional interest was already taking shape in early 2025, when a Fireblocks survey of 295 executives found that 90% of respondents were using or planning to use stablecoins.

Since then, major financial institutions have expanded their presence in the sector. Societe Generale’s crypto subsidiary has issued euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins, while Fidelity recently launched its US dollar-pegged FIDD stablecoin. 

SocGens crypto subsidiary has issued euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins, as has Fidelity, with its FIDD US dollar-denominated entry. Last month, Standard Chartered backed a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin venture.

Related: SEC sends crypto custody rule overhaul to White House for review

Ethena has rolled out Ethena Pay, a global “money app” designed to bring its USDe synthetic dollar into everyday use—covering payments, savings and cross-border transfers. The announcement positions USDe less as a tradeable stablecoin and more as a mechanism for day-to-day value storage and movement.

According to Ethena’s update posted on X, the self-custodial app will let users hold USDe via a dollar-denominated balance, earn up to 6% annualized rewards, and spend using a payment card. The beta rollout is set to begin with limited access—initially 400 users—before expanding weekly across a broad set of regions.

Key takeaways

• Ethena Pay is a self-custodial app built around USDe for payments, savings and transfers.
• Users can deposit fiat or crypto, with funds converted into USDe (USDe) for a dollar-denominated balance.
• The beta begins with 400 users and expands weekly; Ethena targets 48 countries at launch.
• Avalanche is named as the exclusive settlement layer for payment and transfer flows.
• Ethena Pay is not initially available in the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan, or South Korea, with expansion tied to regulatory approval.

Ethena Pay turns USDe into a daily-use wallet

Ethena’s pitch with Ethena Pay is straightforward: users should be able to hold USDe like a cash-like balance and use it for commerce and transfers without relying on traditional banking infrastructure. In the beta, Ethena says users can deposit fiat or crypto, after which funds are converted into USDe (USDe).

The app also supports movement between external banking systems. Ethena states that the product can use IBAN details to move money to and from external bank accounts into local currencies, effectively framing USDe as the routing layer for cross-border activity.

Infrastructure for the onramp/offramp components is partly handled by Iron, which Ethena describes as being owned by MoonPay. This is relevant for users because it points to a practical bridge between conventional fiat rails and a synthetic stablecoin-based balance rather than requiring fully crypto-native onboarding for everyone.

Beta geography and rollout pace

Ethena says the beta rollout will cover 48 countries, spanning Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and other regions. However, the initial distribution is narrow: access is limited to 400 users at the start.

That staged approach matters for risk management and operational testing, particularly for a product combining self-custody, fiat conversion, card-based spending and cross-border transfer workflows. The weekly expansion schedule suggests Ethena intends to validate demand and reliability while broadening coverage gradually.

There is also clear geographic constraint in the initial release. Ethena states that Ethena Pay is not initially available in the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan or South Korea. Ethena expects to expand to those markets during the beta period, but only “subject to regulatory approval,” highlighting that the technical rollout is not the only gating factor.

Avalanche settlement for payments and transfers

One of the more concrete architectural decisions in Ethena’s announcement is the choice of Avalanche as the exclusive settlement layer for payments and transfers within Ethena Pay. For users, that implies that while USDe is the value unit being held and moved, the underlying settlement mechanism for the app’s transaction flows will be handled through Avalanche, not directly through Ethereum’s base layer.

For developers and investors, this signals an intent to treat USDe as a payments-focused asset that can interoperate with non-Ethereum execution environments at the settlement layer. It also reduces a common friction point—where stablecoin-based payment products often get bogged down in settlement throughput, latency, or cost considerations tied to a single blockchain choice.

USDe growth and what it means for Ethena’s expansion

Ethena is an Ethereum-based protocol underpinning USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to keep its value close to $1 without depending on traditional banking reserves. USDe maintains its peg using a combination of crypto collateral and hedging strategies, including derivatives positions, according to Ethena’s documentation.

As USDe expands beyond trading and into payments, size and adoption become more than marketing talking points. DefiLlama data shows USDe has reached a market capitalization of approximately $4.1 billion, which DefiLlama ranks as the sixth-largest stablecoin.

Ethena’s growth story is paired with movement in its governance token. Ethena operates ENA, which has a market capitalization of roughly $1.5 billion, according to the figures cited in the underlying reporting. ENA has reportedly rallied sharply over the past month, up about 68%, though it remains below earlier highs.

On Friday, the Ethena Foundation proposed directing 95% of the net revenue it receives from Ethena’s core businesses toward ENA buybacks once USDe’s circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. After that proposal was made, ENA rose more than 10%, and was reported to gain 27% over the week.

Market activity around ENA has also been notable. The article notes ENA trading volume of about $595 million over the past 24 hours, up 16% from the previous day, with CoinGecko data placing its price around $0.16 on Tuesday.

While Ethena Pay is about real-world utility for USDe, the token mechanics matter because they can shape investor expectations around how Ethena may fund growth and align token incentives. The buyback proposal, tied to a specific USDe supply threshold, also creates a clear milestone that readers can watch as a proxy for how quickly the ecosystem is scaling.

What to watch as Ethena Pay expands

For now, the biggest open question is how quickly Ethena can convert a crypto-native stablecoin economy into mass-friendly payment and transfer usage while operating within regulatory limits. As the beta expands weekly from the initial 400 users across the planned 48 countries, the rollout to excluded markets—particularly the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan and South Korea—will likely be the next major indicator of whether Ethena can scale Ethena Pay beyond the initial geography.

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