Anthropic’s Claude Powers Crypto, SpaceX Leverages Stablecoins & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

• Competitive Edge: What OpenAI’s o3 means for crypto. 

• Cryptofying AI: Sending crypto with Anthropic’s Claude. 

• Canary In The Coal Mine: The implications of Stripe's Bridge acquisition.

If you’re curious about which crypto ecosystem has been top of mind lately, the chart below might just give you some clues. 

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Canary In The Coal Mine

I predict that in 2025, legacy financial institutions and payment service providers will increasingly acquire startups or acquihire teams that are building stablecoin rails — Stripe's acquisition of Bridge being the canary in the coal mine.

This trend will be driven by the growing recognition that stablecoins address critical inefficiencies in traditional payment systems, such as high transaction costs, slow settlement times, and limited financial inclusion in underserved markets. Further advancements in blockchain technology and increasing regulatory clarity are expected to fuel this shift, as stablecoins gain wider acceptance as a reliable payment method in both developed and emerging economies.

While incumbents could build their own blockchain engineering teams to develop stablecoin payment infrastructure, this is a far more complex endeavour than, for example, establishing teams for classic SaaS solutions. Blockchain projects require an extremely niche skill set in cryptography, distributed systems, and smart contract/program development — talent that is difficult to find and prohibitively expensive to recruit individually.

Moreover, blockchain ecosystems are riddled with fragmented standards and operational complexities that increase the risk and cost — making the in-house development of stablecoin rails a daunting task. For incumbents, acquiring startups with proven expertise in stablecoin technology or acquihiring stablecoin teams is not only faster but also a more cost-effective path to market readiness.

As such, this strategy presents a significant opportunity for incumbents aiming to compete at the Tier 1 level. By acquiring or acquihiring stablecoin know-how, these companies can immediately enhance their competitiveness in trade, cross-border payments, and multi-jurisdictional business operations — enabling them to capture large market shares while supercharging global reach. Trust me, legacy financial institutions and payment service providers across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are taking notice — it will be interesting to see the strategies they unveil for 2025. 

The directive for 2025 is straightforward: By onboarding expertise in stablecoin infrastructure, incumbents will increasingly roll out enhanced payment solutions that meet the demands of a global, digital-first economy — future-proofing their businesses.

But here’s the punchline: Most legacy financial institutions and payment service providers have yet to fully realise the immense potential of stablecoins. Once they do, the frenzy will be unprecedented — buckle up!

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Crypto ETF Roadmap: Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, highlights a potential roadmap for crypto spot ETFs in 2025. Notably, Bloomberg anticipates spot ETFs for Litecoin and Hedera to launch before one for Solana (SOL).

Cryptofying AI: Experimentation with AI agents on blockchains has been a hot topic lately. A particularly exciting development involves leveraging Anthropic’s Claude to send cryptocurrencies directly within the chat interface — something I anticipate will soon be heavily powered by Solana.

AI-Powered Trading: Bots for trading on decentralised exchanges have been around for years, but now barriers to entry are dropping rapidly. Light coding is now all that’s required to build AI agents on Solana for automated token trading — have a look at this example.

Competitive Edge: OpenAI has unveiled o3, its most advanced AI model to date. This upgrade is poised to benefit onchain businesses, which often operate with lean engineering teams, by enabling them to further optimise their profit margins and competitive edge over their legacy competitors.

Consumer Brand: Recently PENGU, a memecoin from Pudgy Penguins, was launched on Solana. Pudgy Penguins are crypto's first breakthrough consumer brand, with toys available at major retailers such as Walmart and Target. And while PENGU is fundamentally a memecoin, it represents something more profound: Crypto's first-ever Consumer Brand Token (CBT) and Intellectual Property Token (IPT). 

Solana Slashing: Slashing, a mechanism designed to penalise malicious or non-compliant validators, has not been broadly adopted on Solana. However, the developer ecosystem is now working towards implementing slashing — read about the latest progress here.

Toasting Sandwiches: Sandwich attacks have been a persistent issue on Solana. Having said that, Paladin has successfully reduced the percentage of validators engaging in sandwiching from 92% to 88%, demonstrating that sandwich attacks are becoming less profitable on Solana.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

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Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}