Banking, payments, tokenization and financial markets.
Trezor analyst Lucien Bourdon said self-custodial wallets can securely hold RWA tokens like gold or Treasury-backed assets, but unlike crypto, ownership differs. With cryptocurrencies, private keys mean direct ownership, while with RWAs, the token is secured, but the underlying asset stays with an issuer or custodian.
Chainalysis data shows Bitcoin dominates crypto adoption, pulling in over $4.6T in fiat inflows, with the U.S. leading at $4.2T. Layer-1 tokens followed with $4T, stablecoins just under $1T, and memecoins around $250B. Bitcoin’s share was especially strong in the UK and EU, where nearly half of fiat purchases went into BTC.
Crypto.com partnered with Trump Media, owner of Truth Social, to launch a treasury strategy for its native token Cronos (CRO). The token jumped nearly 150% to $0.38 on the news but later eased back to $0.27, far below its 2021 peak.
Industry voices are divided on crypto treasury firms. Some, like Milo CEO Josip Rupena, warn they carry risks akin to the 2008 CDO crisis, while others, like Bitwise’s Matt Hougan, argue they make Ethereum more investable for traditional markets. Sharplink’s Joseph Chalom highlighted their scalability, though analysts such as James Check and VC firm Breed warned that many Bitcoin treasuries could face a “death spiral” over time.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the new futures index is part of building an “everything exchange,” tied to the firm’s broader “everything app” strategy. In July, Coinbase rebranded its wallet as the Base app, aiming to merge trading, payments, social media, and messaging in one platform.
Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin predicts that Ether will eventually surpass Bitcoin as the global “monetary base,” fueled by Wall Street’s adoption of staking, DeFi, and tokenization. He calls ETH the “highest octane decentralized trust commodity,” arguing its potential is far greater than most forecasts. Institutional clients are already allocating treasury assets to ETH, while stablecoin supply on Ethereum has surged past $160 billion, doubling since January 2024. Though Bitcoin still dominates as a store of value, Ethereum’s programmability and rapid ecosystem growth could accelerate the long-awaited “flippening.”
Solana’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade is set to drastically cut transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to just 150 milliseconds, with over 99% of votes in favor so far. Introduced by Anza in May, it’s being called Solana’s biggest protocol upgrade yet, potentially making it even faster than Google searches. The upgrade replaces existing consensus systems with Votor (for faster block finalization) and Rotor (for quicker data sharing), promising nearly 100x speed improvements. While it won’t solve Solana’s history of outages, the arrival of the independent Firedancer client later this year is expected to improve network stability. If approved, Alpenglow will cement Solana’s position as one of the fastest layer-1 blockchains, expanding use cases far beyond payments and trading.