💬 Social network

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Crypto’s cool again.

It’s interesting to see the rise of countries interested in crypto — outside of the US — and the roles played by Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, of course. 

The latest development is from Kyrgyzstan, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Binance and — perhaps more interestingly — plans to launch a gold-backed stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. 

Meanwhile, Pakistan appointed CZ as a crypto advisor in early April. 

CZ’s post-Binance career has become pretty clear: influence crypto adoption. Now we’ll just have to see how much sway he has. 

Take this post, for example. Will his pitch become reality? I’m curious to see what kind of influence he has publicly, at least.

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s down slightly to $94,000 this morning, a 1.4% decline. 

• Total stablecoin value is up to $231 billion, a 1.7% increase over the past month.

• DeFi TVL is over $101 billion, a 6% increase in the past week, per Blockworks Research.

💧 Making ripples

In the past few months, we’ve talked about the rise of fundamentals in crypto. 

I take a similar stance to Arca CIO Jeff Dorman when looking at projects: I’m not expecting them to start producing revenue tomorrow, but I’m very aware that projects will need some sort of vision about how they plan to make money. VC raises can truly only get them so far. 

But Dorman, in this week’s episode of the Empire podcast, made an interesting point. Some projects can win in the social value category without necessarily relying on other fundamentals. 

“You've got financial value, which is cash flows. You've got utility value, which is some form of usefulness. And then you have social value. And social value is real. It's much harder to define. But you can't dismiss it,” Dorman explained. He clarified that he’s not just thinking about memecoins or memestocks, but projects that have really catered to and built up social value.

If you’re searching for a winner in this category, it may be Ripple. XRP, at a market cap of $126 billion, is arguably overvalued. 

“ But that doesn’t [mean that] because there is no financial value, there is no utility value. It's a hundred percent just social value,” Dorman explained. The “ social value of being one of the oldest cryptocurrencies and having this massive following could one day lead to something that does have financial value.”

Dorman compared it to a call option, referring to the contract between a buyer and seller to purchase a stock at a certain price within a set period. 

To its credit, Ripple is eyeing ways to boost its own financial profile. Ripple acquired Hidden Road, giving it access to a new business with the added bonus of a US broker-dealer license. 

And, if we’re to believe a report from Bloomberg last week, Ripple also attempted to approach Circle with a hefty bid between $4 and $5 billion. The bid, at this point, is pretty on par with what Circle itself is eyeing upon public debut, but it’s too early to say whether or not it can debut at that valuation. 

All of this is to say that Ripple is clearly trying to take advantage of its dominance and expand its reach, which has the added potential of boosting its fundamental value. 

So fundamentals aren’t key to success yet, but I also wonder if any other project could copy what Ripple’s done at this stage. It seems to be in a league of its own.

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• Indonesia is hitting pause on World, claiming that the Sam Altman-backed project may have violated the country’s regulations. 

• French authorities rescued the father of a man who made a pretty penny on crypto and arrested the kidnappers. 

• CME’s crypto derivatives volumes soared 129% in April, with ETH futures leading the way.

From NFTs to prediction markets, loyalty engines to mobile-native wallets — Permissionless IV is where real users meet real products.

Crypto’s next big unlock isn’t technical — it’s usable. Come build it. 

June 24–26 in Brooklyn.

We didn’t get to talk about Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino’s comments to CNBC on Friday about Tether’s potential US play. 

ICYMI, he told the network that the US version of Tether’s stablecoin could launch as early as this year. 

However, a lot of this rides on the shoulders of US lawmakers at this point. Stablecoin legislation is not yet finalized, and Tether will need to see what lawmakers decide on before they cater a stablecoin to the US. But Ardoino was clear that the domestic coin would be different from the international version, USDT. 

“It depends on the timeline of the final legislation… but we are looking at that by the end of the year, or early next year at the fastest,” he told CNBC.

Personally, I’m not over how quickly everything is moving for stablecoins, though it makes complete sense. They’re a huge use case for both TradFi and crypto, and the framework needs to be sorted to really see the segment boom. 

But I couldn’t have seen the speed at which this would play out last year (sometimes I really wish I had a crystal ball). 

After the last couple of years, I’m not complaining — just eager to see how this plays out.