⬛ Lending is the new black

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Tether’s been busy. 

This morning, the stablecoin issuer announced it made a strategic investment in Fizen Limited, a firm focused on self-custody crypto wallets. 

The goal, per Tether's blog post, is to expand the adoption and use cases of stablecoins. Something that’s obviously near and dear to its heart. 

And this is on top of its announcement yesterday that it plans to deploy hash rate on OCEAN, a bitcoin mining pool. 

At least Tether is never boring to watch.

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s up to $85K this morning, a 7% increase over the past week. 

• The total stablecoin market cap sits at $226B, a slight increase over the past month.

• DEX volume is up 15% to $8.4B in the past 24 hours, per Blockworks Research data.

💪 The comeback kid

So lending markets have yet to make a comeback this cycle — and it kinda makes sense.

But Galaxy may have some good news for us all: Lending could be ready for some green shoots of its own. 

“The convergence of traditional financial expertise with blockchain-based innovation suggests a future where crypto lending services become increasingly sophisticated and reliable, while maintaining the unique benefits of blockchain technology,” Galaxy’s Zack Pokorny wrote.

“As the sector continues to mature, it may well serve as a bridge between traditional finance and the emerging digital asset ecosystem, facilitating broader adoption of cryptocurrency-based financial services.”

At the end of last year, Tether, Galaxy and Ledn led the CeFi lending pack. Combined, the three had a loan book of $9.9 billion. 

Lending, at its peak, had a total loan book of $34 billion, per Galaxy’s data — and it dropped as low as $6.4 billion after the collapse of the sector. Yikes.

Depending on your vibe this morning: The segment is up 73% from the lows, if you want to look at it positively, or down 68% off the highs. 

But let’s not just focus on the CeFi of it all, right? 

DeFi lending has actually seen more of a comeback. There’s been a whopping 959% increase — with $19 billion in open borrows at the end of last year — in “open DeFi borrows on the observed chains and applications in the eight quarters since the bottom was set.”

At the end of last year, the number of outstanding loans through onchain lending apps was roughly 18% higher than the peak — $16 billion — set at the height of the bull market last cycle. 

The strength of the recovery “can be attributed to the permissionless nature of blockchain-based applications and the survival of lending applications through the bear market chaos that felled major CeFi lenders.” 

I know what you’re thinking: This data is great, but what’s next for both CeFi and DeFi lending? 

Well, the answer is pretty obvious for CeFi — it all boils down to TradFi adoption. That subsector of the larger lending market will bounce back as we see more institutional adoption. Easy peasy — or so it looks. 

But funnily enough, DeFi’s in a similar boat. Pokorny noted that DeFi lending’s future is tied to more institutions being onboarded, and, of course, building on the lending apps. 

“The cryptocurrency lending market appears poised for a new phase of growth, characterized by improved risk management frameworks, greater institutional participation, and clearer regulatory guidelines,” he noted. 

I know we’ve been talking so much about institutions coming in, but this is why.

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Arkham is a crypto exchange and a blockchain analytics platform that lets you look inside the wallets of the best crypto traders — and then act on that information.

Arkham’s Intel Platform has a suite of features including real-time alerts, customizable dashboards, a transaction visualization tool, and advanced transaction filtering — all of which is accessible on all major blockchain networks, and completely free.

Arkham’s main product is the exchange, where users can express their trade ideas against the market.

• While most TradFi firms are making their way to crypto, Kraken’s taking a different approach in offering stock and ETF trading. 

• Self-care? Bitdeer’s gonna just focus on itself (aka prioritize self-mining) for a while thanks to the tariffs. 

• Anchorage is reportedly facing a US Department of Homeland Security probe — yes, you read that right.

👑 King of the stables

Just last week, the FT reported that Tether’s considering a US-only stablecoin. Why? Because their current $144 billion-dollar stablecoin USDT may not comply with potential new US regulation (which is still making its way through the relevant checkpoints down in DC). 

Wintermute, in its last weekly market update, noted that some of USDT’s market share had been “eroding” thanks to both the as-of-yet nonexistent US regulation and, of course, MiCA.

Here’s why it matters: No doubt, Tether is still the biggest — and as we’ve seen Circle’s S-1 — and most profitable player in the space right now. But, as I’ve been writing the past couple of months, regulation and adoption could lead to further shakeups as we get new entrants into the space and others eat up more market share.

“The stablecoin market cap soared 15% in 2025 to a record $233 billion, with USDC fueling much of the growth by adding $16 billion compared to USDT’s $7 billion increase,” Wintermute wrote. 

Then, let's take a look at specific ecosystems. 

You have Tron, which saw a $6 billion bump — from $61 billion to $67 billion — pretty much only driven by USDT.

Solana’s stablecoin market cap sits at $12 billion now, up from $5.3 billion.

And over on Ethereum, USDC’s market share has jumped to 30% while USDT slipped slightly to 52% (a 4% decline), though it held on to its $64 billion valuation. 

I am in no way, shape, or form rooting for any of the OG stablecoin issuers to lose their footing or profitability; that’s not why this type of data interests me. Rather, I think competition in the space is good, and it’s a win-win for consumers: force the heavyweights to keep innovating without monopolizing and make space for the new wave of entrants. 

It adds a little spice to the sector. What’s wrong with a little spice?

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On our minds: Mantra

0xResearch’s Macauley Peterson:

Sunday’s implosion of OM triggered a storm of finger-pointing, and the Mantra team is playing defense. CEO JP Mullin denies any wrongdoing, claiming the crash stemmed from forced liquidations of OM used as collateral on centralized exchanges — and not insider sales. 

Onchain trackers show some $227M moved to exchanges pre-crash, but key investors like Laser Digital and Shorooq have publicly denied selling, sharing wallet addresses.

There’s a lot we still don’t know. As Robert Baggs wrote, "now is the time for the analysts and sleuths to uncover the intricate details of what happened." ZachXBT, for one, points to possible involvement from known market manipulators.

What’s clear is this wasn’t a hack or exploit, but critics point to the near impossibility of proving that token movements were not related to undisclosed team or investor holdings.

It strains credulity that on a day when major crypto assets experienced little volatility, OM collateralized trading positions would suddenly experience such a severe margin call. There’s negligence here somewhere, at best.

Mullin insists he and the team are “not running from anything” and claims Arkham mislabeled wallets. He promises a full post-mortem. That will be welcome.

Amazingly, OM — even after the crash — still has an FDV of over $1 billion. Mullin has also called protecting existing token holders his “number one fiduciary duty” in a post on X on Friday. Despite its still-lofty valuation, after a -90% day, it’s hard to see it any other way than that he has failed.