quote: . @gdog97_ explains @Ethena Pay and lays out why owning the entire stack matters by pointing to how Coinbase captures 60% of Circle's USDC revenue
"A lot of the products in the market haven't got the full vertical integration between owning the stablecoin infrastructure, the yield generation engine, and the front end that sits on top. Taking a debit card and putting it on someone else's stablecoin means you lose the most valuable piece of the entire chain, the stablecoin sitting in the background"
"If you're creating one of these platforms and you don't own the whole stack, the issuance of the stablecoins, the generation of the yield, and all the UX and cards and spending on top of it, you've lost the beating heart of these businesses"
"People speak a lot about the Coinbase and Circle deal, where Coinbase makes something like 60% of the revenues of the USDC sitting there. If you always depend on the distribution of others, there isn't that much margin left for you in the end. If you never own the user, you can never control that economic relationship in a much more powerful way"
@ethena | E184: @ethena CEO - Why @EthenaPay Feels Like Revolut, Not MetaMask
@gdog97_ is the founder and CEO of Ethena. He stumbled into DeFi in 2019 when a friend showed him MakerDAO - taking out a $5,000 loan against $10,000 of ETH with no one standing in the middle of the transaction.
Six years later he's running Ethena, which scaled to $15 billion in stablecoin supply faster than anything else in crypto history, and his thesis is that a dollar with a yield in an app that doesn't feel like crypto is what finally brings 100 million new users in.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
2:37 Which Of Guy's Plans Fell Apart
5:37 Where Actually Are The Users Everyone Wants
7:10 What Got Guy Hooked On Crypto
9:20 PayPal vs Revolut vs Neo Banks
12:43 Partnerships: @variational_io @Bitwise
13:36 Revolut vs Stablecoin Neo Banks
15:58 Is Switching To Neo Banks Really A 10x
18:00 EthenaPay, Explained Simply
21:21 Why Build Another Crypto Neo Bank
23:53 Will Crypto Banks Fight Over The Pie
25:55 How Ethena Wins Users By Helping Everyone
32:47 What Actually Makes Ethena Different
36:51 Ethena's Cashback System Revealed
38:32 How Ethena Cuts Fees
39:39 How Ethena Finds The Best Yield
45:16 Guy On Dealing With FUD
48:35 Why Guy Stays Quiet
49:29 Partnership: @KASTxyz
50:17 Ethena's KPI Targets
51:55 The Holy Grail For A Stablecoin Neo Bank
52:31 Partnerships: @JupiterExchange Ethena
53:14 If Everyone Does The Same Thing, Who Wins
55:23 What's Next For Ethena After EthenaPay
56:36 Is EthenaPay Basically USDe
58:04 Closing Thoughts
0·-Neutral
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Reuters9/8news
Kansas Republican Senator Marshall Says He Will Fight to Keep Bombardier’s Over 1,200 Kansas Jobs After Trump’s Threats to Ban Bombardier Airplanes
5·CNeutral
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news9/8news
Between this and the “Cabinet Planning Forum” he’s scheduled this week, Carney is bracing for a long fight.
Canadian retaliatory tariffs kicked in today. I’m told they see a low chance of any deal before the midterms. Trump is silent so far on any response.
80·ALong
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news9/7news
Trump’s Trade War Is Shaping the Fight for Congress
80·ALong
n
news9/5news
Is CLARITY dead?
@RebeccaRettig1 and @renato_mariotti unpack the growing doubts around crypto’s market structure bill, as Kalshi’s prediction market fight heads toward the Supreme Court.
Plus, @Chainlink’s @kkirkbos on 21 global banks challenging Circle and Tether; and a “creative” path to bring Hyperliquid onshore.
The latest Policy Protocol.
Chapters/Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to The Policy Protocol 02:07 Hot Topic: Ninth Circuit Rules Against Kalshi 03:12 New Jersey Takes Prediction Markets to SCOTUS 04:31 The Kalshi–Michigan Federalism Fight 06:17 Hot Topic: SEC's 24/7 Trading Roundtable 08:57 Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of Chainlink Joins 09:30 21 Global Banks Launch a Joint Stablecoin 12:14 Bringing Hyperliquid Onshore via Kraken–Bitnomial 16:14 London Stock Exchange's Tokenization Push 18:13 Are We in a Post-CLARITY Era? 21:00 Person of the Week: The U.S. House 21:51 Is the House Recess Really 'Devastating'? 24:26 A Big Miss for Crypto — and America
75·ALong
n
news9/5news
Is CLARITY dead?
@RebeccaRettig1 and @renato_mariotti unpack the growing doubts around crypto’s market structure bill, as Kalshi’s prediction market fight heads toward the Supreme Court.
Plus, @Chainlink’s @kkirkbos on 21 global banks challenging Circle and Tether; and a “creative” path to bring Hyperliquid onshore.
The latest Policy Protocol.
Chapters/Timecodes:
00:00 Welcome to The Policy Protocol
02:07 Hot Topic: Ninth Circuit Rules Against Kalshi
03:12 New Jersey Takes Prediction Markets to SCOTUS
04:31 The Kalshi–Michigan Federalism Fight
06:17 Hot Topic: SEC's 24/7 Trading Roundtable
08:57 Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of Chainlink Joins
09:30 21 Global Banks Launch a Joint Stablecoin
12:14 Bringing Hyperliquid Onshore via Kraken–Bitnomial
16:14 London Stock Exchange's Tokenization Push
18:13 Are We in a Post-CLARITY Era?
21:00 Person of the Week: The U.S. House
21:51 Is the House Recess Really 'Devastating'?
24:26 A Big Miss for Crypto — and America
75·ALong
F
Forbes9/4news
August Hiring Rebound Raises The Cost Of A September Pause. A firmer payrolls print makes labor a weaker excuse for holding rates. It does not settle inflation or the midterm fight over living costs.
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meme9/3meme
quote: A consortium of twenty-one banks and asset managers, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Fidelity and WisdomTree, will form a company in the second half of 2026 and issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin in the first half of 2027, then expand to the euro and other G7 currencies.
The group has more than doubled since an October 2025 exploration by ten banks. Sponsors say the token will serve wholesale, institutional and retail uses, from cross-border payments to tokenized-asset settlement, and will be designed to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act and, where relevant, the EU’s MiCA rules.
Private dollar tokens already dominate on-chain settlement. Tether still leads with more than $180 billion outstanding, recycling reserves into short-term Treasuries. Circle’s USDC is the main regulated rival. A bank coin will not automatically displace them; Société Générale’s earlier dollar token showed how little demand appears without distribution and liquidity.
Markets still treated the plan as a competitive threat. Circle shares fell about six percent as investors priced in the risk that large banks would keep more of the float, distribution and reserve economics on their own rails.
The contest is also a fight over the architecture of money. The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created the first federal regime for payment stablecoins: one-to-one reserves in cash, insured deposits and short-dated government paper, monthly disclosures, anti-money-laundering and sanctions duties, and a finding that such tokens are neither securities nor federally insured deposits.
Core licensing rules phase in around January 2027, which is why the launch window is not arbitrary. A market-structure bill, often called the Clarity Act, faces a Senate test in mid-September. Crypto firms have poured a record $190 million to more than $200 million into the 2026 midterms, becoming the largest corporate political spender, to lock in those rules and preserve banking access. Their 2024 outlays helped produce the stablecoin statute; this cycle is an attempt to finish the federal framework before control of Congress may shift.
Geopolitics pulls the other way. Dollar stablecoins already function as a private extension of reserve-currency status. The Bank for International Settlements has warned that large-scale adoption abroad can amount to digital dollarization, weakening local policy transmission.
ECB President Christine Lagarde has argued that privately issued stablecoins, even in euros, pose risks to monetary policy and financial stability. Isabel Schnabel has called them complements, not substitutes, for central-bank money and urged official settlement to move on-chain.
That is why Qivalis, a thirty-seven-bank European consortium, is racing to launch a euro token later in 2026 under Dutch supervision. Some lenders, including BBVA, sit in both groups. The result is a contest among dollar rails, euro rails and official experiments in tokenized deposits.
The political overlay is American. President Trump’s support revived institutional interest after the 2024 crypto rebound, and his family’s World Liberty Financial has issued its own token. That proximity has complicated talks on rewards, illicit finance and self-dealing. November’s midterms will decide whether the current statutory path is completed or reopened.
Banks are positioning for regulated digital dollars as ordinary plumbing. Crypto-native firms are spending to keep that plumbing from being written only in bank language. Central banks elsewhere are trying to keep the settlement layer public. The 2027 coin is less a product launch than a bet that the dollar, U.S. law and large-balance-sheet distribution will still define the next generation of digital money even as geopolitics, inflation and elections keep rewriting the terms. | From stablecoins being the center of attention to crypto companies ploughing money into the US midterms, Francis Maguire rounds up the crypto stories of the week https://reut.rs/4iqHOP9
95·A+Neutral
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news9/3news
A consortium of twenty-one banks and asset managers, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Fidelity and WisdomTree, will form a company in the second half of 2026 and issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin in the first half of 2027, then expand to the euro and other G7 currencies.
The group has more than doubled since an October 2025 exploration by ten banks. Sponsors say the token will serve wholesale, institutional and retail uses, from cross-border payments to tokenized-asset settlement, and will be designed to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act and, where relevant, the EU’s MiCA rules.
Private dollar tokens already dominate on-chain settlement. Tether still leads with more than $180 billion outstanding, recycling reserves into short-term Treasuries. Circle’s USDC is the main regulated rival. A bank coin will not automatically displace them; Société Générale’s earlier dollar token showed how little demand appears without distribution and liquidity.
Markets still treated the plan as a competitive threat. Circle shares fell about six percent as investors priced in the risk that large banks would keep more of the float, distribution and reserve economics on their own rails.
The contest is also a fight over the architecture of money. The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created the first federal regime for payment stablecoins: one-to-one reserves in cash, insured deposits and short-dated government paper, monthly disclosures, anti-money-laundering and sanctions duties, and a finding that such tokens are neither securities nor federally insured deposits.
Core licensing rules phase in around January 2027, which is why the launch window is not arbitrary. A market-structure bill, often called the Clarity Act, faces a Senate test in mid-September. Crypto firms have poured a record $190 million to more than $200 million into the 2026 midterms, becoming the largest corporate political spender, to lock in those rules and preserve banking access. Their 2024 outlays helped produce the stablecoin statute; this cycle is an attempt to finish the federal framework before control of Congress may shift.
Geopolitics pulls the other way. Dollar stablecoins already function as a private extension of reserve-currency status. The Bank for International Settlements has warned that large-scale adoption abroad can amount to digital dollarization, weakening local policy transmission.
ECB President Christine Lagarde has argued that privately issued stablecoins, even in euros, pose risks to monetary policy and financial stability. Isabel Schnabel has called them complements, not substitutes, for central-bank money and urged official settlement to move on-chain.
That is why Qivalis, a thirty-seven-bank European consortium, is racing to launch a euro token later in 2026 under Dutch supervision. Some lenders, including BBVA, sit in both groups. The result is a contest among dollar rails, euro rails and official experiments in tokenized deposits.
The political overlay is American. President Trump’s support revived institutional interest after the 2024 crypto rebound, and his family’s World Liberty Financial has issued its own token. That proximity has complicated talks on rewards, illicit finance and self-dealing. November’s midterms will decide whether the current statutory path is completed or reopened.
Banks are positioning for regulated digital dollars as ordinary plumbing. Crypto-native firms are spending to keep that plumbing from being written only in bank language. Central banks elsewhere are trying to keep the settlement layer public. The 2027 coin is less a product launch than a bet that the dollar, U.S. law and large-balance-sheet distribution will still define the next generation of digital money even as geopolitics, inflation and elections keep rewriting the terms.
95·A+Neutral
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meme9/3meme
quote: Privately, Trump is having discussions with senior aides about whether to declare the Iran war over, U.S. officials said, noting Trump has said he favors the idea. Trump also tells aides that he believes sticking with economic pressure will eventually force the regime either to dismantle its nuclear program or collapse, they said.
“I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing,” he wrote on social media. “They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” | Hegseth Extends Mideast Deployments Into 2027, Escalating Strain on Troops
Trump has told aides privately that he believes his strategy will eventually work, as 50,000 troops remain on hand to give him options https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-extends-mideast-deployments-into-2027-escalating-strain-on-troops-c10fc533?st=dAWAxa&reflink=article_copyURL_share
80·ANeutral
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news9/2news
COINTELEGRAPH: US officials work with CrowdStrike to fight malware behind crypto theft