Author: NBTC

Stablecoins are emerging as one of the most closely watched developments in global finance, as banks, payment firms, and technology companies explore blockchain-based alternatives to traditional payment rails. Once mainly used by traders moving funds between cryptocurrency exchanges, stablecoins are now expanding into cross-border remittances, merchant settlements, treasury management, and machine-to-machine payments. The shift is happening as businesses seek cheaper alternatives to conventional banking infrastructure, where international transfers can take days to settle and involve multiple intermediaries. According to a16z crypto’s April 24 report, stablecoin transfer volume reached $4.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, with usage increasingly tied…

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has made it abundantly clear what remains the company’s top priority. The highly influential executive has just reaffirmed that $XRP remains at the center of the ecosystem of one of the San Francisco-headquartered enterprise blockchain companies. 100%All roads lead back to Ripple’s North Star, $XRP. https://t.co/z7cWxoQN1H — Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) April 28, 2026 Re-communicating the “North Star” Garlinghouse’s latest statement came via X (formerly Twitter) in a direct response to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Ohanian was commenting on a business philosophy post regarding company alignment, noting that a “CEO’s responsibility is to communicate and re-communicate the…

A new coalition is forming, focused on crypto vaults, an increasingly popular mechanism for depositing digital assets and earning yield. On Friday, the Crypto Council for Innovation launched the Vault Coalition, with backing led by Galaxy and Morpho. BitGo, a16z, the Avalanche Policy Coalition, and Sharplink are also part of the coalition. Crypto vaults are smart contracts that pool together deposited funds that are then generated to create yield. The process then gives each depositor a vault receipt token representing their share. Over the past year, firms have launched vaults, including Kraken and Tesseract. Despite their growing experimentation, CCI said…

Cross-border payout platform MassPay and Coinbase announced a partnership on Thursday to offer stablecoin cross-border payouts. The partnership connects MassPay’s network in 180 countries with the US-based exchange’s crypto infrastructure, allowing customers to move between fiat, $USDC and other digital assets, the companies said in a joint statement shared with Cointelegraph. MassPay CEO Ran Grushkowsky told Cointelegraph that stablecoins are still a small slice of the company’s transaction volume. Still, the company expects the new rails to support nine-figure payouts in the first year. He added that clients using the system have seen costs fall by about 40% to 70%…

Renowned cryptocurrency advocate and investor Anthony Pompliano, in his latest appearance on a television program, discussed uncertainties in the global economy, the AI boom, and the dominant role Bitcoin will play in this new financial ecosystem. Pompliano argued that in a world where artificial intelligence creates an “abundance and production explosion” in every field, the value of assets with strict rules and limited supply will increase exponentially, making Bitcoin the safest haven. Pompliano stated that macroeconomic data, inflation reports, and interest rate policies are creating significant uncertainty, and noted that even within the Fed, there are major disagreements regarding whether…

The crypto industry’s embrace of AI is less about chatbots and more about building financial infrastructure for autonomous machines, says Chappy Asel, a former Apple engineer and founder of AI nonprofit The AI Collective. Speaking at Consensus Miami, Asel, founder of The AI Collective, a global nonprofit AI community with more than 200,000 members across 150+ chapters, argued that as software agents increasingly make economic decisions on behalf of users and businesses, they will need payment systems capable of handling low-latency, programmable transactions at scale.“When agents make the majority of financial decisions, economic decisions, how do they transact with each…

PumpFun, operating within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, announced a comprehensive burn and buyback plan for its native token, $PUMP, which will directly impact supply and trust dynamics. The platform burned all $PUMP tokens it had previously collected through buybacks, removing approximately $370 million worth of supply from circulation. This amount is said to represent roughly 36% of the circulating supply. According to the company’s statement, the incineration process was carried out in two separate operations at 23:52 UTC+3 on the same day. This step aims to eliminate the lack of trust and uncertainties that have arisen, particularly in recent months. PumpFun…

Polymarket has paid at least $350,000 to social media influencers over a 14-month period, with many of those creators later promoting the prediction market platform on X without clearly disclosing a paid relationship, according to a POLITICO investigation based on PayPal transaction records. According to POLITICO, the payments were sent by Polymarket chief marketing officer Matthew Modabber through a personal PayPal account between January 2025 and February 2026. Polymarket is paying some of social media’s biggest political influencers https://t.co/hUuZ30LThF — POLITICO (@politico) June 5, 2026 The publication reported that Modabber transferred more than $2.5 million to over 800 people during…

Pudgy Penguins, the popular $NFT project behind the PENGU token, has announced it will cease further development and shut down its Web3 mobile game, Pudgy Party, to redirect resources toward expanding its intellectual property through Pudgy World. The decision, disclosed earlier this week, has drawn criticism from some users who purchased NFTs tied to in-game character cosmetics. Background and Timeline Pudgy Party launched in August 2024 as a Web3 mobile game designed to integrate NFTs with gameplay, allowing players to customize their penguin characters using purchased digital assets. The game was part of a broader strategy to expand the Pudgy…

Coinbase launched a standalone account product for AI agents, letting assistants including ChatGPT and Claude execute trades, manage portfolios, and pay for data autonomously under user-defined guardrails. Coinbase for Agents went live Thursday as a separate account from the main Coinbase app. Users connect an existing Coinbase account, set spending limits, and hand the agent access. At launch, agents can trade crypto spot markets and derivatives, per the announcement. Support for equities and prediction markets is planned. The x402 payments integration, which lets agents pay for paywalled research data and APIs without logins or subscriptions, is coming next week. The…