Attackers raced to convert stolen stablecoins into crypto that issuers could not freeze as industry players like Tether and Circle moved to immobilize billions of dollars in assets.
A US fusion startup says it has turned mercury into gold. Could a potential increase in the gold supply strengthen Bitcoin’s claim to be a better form of digital gold?
USDT is coming home to Bitcoin, offering privacy and Lightning-fast payments. But can Utexo’s bridged version of USD₮ compete with stablecoins on ETH and TRON?
Each day brings news of another AI-powered attack, or a newly discovered vulnerability. Here’s what’s happening and how ordinary people can protect themselves online.
Hardware wallets aren’t the only way to protect your crypto, but from ETFs and passkeys to multisig accounts, each alternative has its own risks and trade-offs.
Imagine a founder who wants to add stablecoin payouts to a cross-border marketplace. The plan is simple: pay freelancers in minutes of days and avoid high wire fees. Then reality hits. The chosen provider changes its supported countries with two weeks’ notice. The launch stalls for three months.
This story happens all the time.. It doesn’t have to. Stablecoins are easy to understand.. Running them is hard. Behind every fast transfer is a network of issuers, custodians, banks, blockchains, compliance systems and liquidity sources. Your infrastructure provider decides how well that whole system holds up under stress.
Providers aren’t one-size-fits-all. Some focus on consumer apps others on business payouts or treasury tools. Before even seeing a demo write down:
A clear use case stops you from wasting time on wrong options. It filters the market fast.
Regulation is now the difference between trustworthy providers and risky ones. New rules like the EU’s MiCA and the U.S.’s GENIUS Act require transparency, reserves and oversight. Don’t assume. Ask directly:
Laws change. Check requirements with legal experts. If a provider answers these questions clearly and in writing they’ve likely done the work.
Stablecoin payments move money. They can’t be reversed. One mistake means loss. Look for:
Security isn’t optional. It’s part of trust.
Speed claims don’t mean much if the money isn’t available. A provider might promise transfers but large trades could face slippage or delays over weekends. Ask for numbers:
Real-world testing beats promises.
The price listed online rarely shows the cost. Compare cost of ownership not just percentages. Watch for:
Model the cost at today’s volume and at ten times that. Providers that seem cheap at volume often become expensive when you grow.
Your engineers will work with this integration for years. A poor API slows sprints. Increases bugs. During evaluation let a developer spend a day in the sandbox. Then ask:
This isn’t about code. It’s about team pain.
Vendor lock-in is a risk. Always ask: How would I leave if needed? Can I export transaction history and user data? Can I move wallets or balances to another custodian? Are contract terms fair? Good providers make leaving easier. Think about having a provider for backup once your volume grows. A single point of failure is a business risk. Not a tech issue.
Turn the checklist into a weighted scorecard. Rate each shortlisted provider one to five in each category. Then assign weights based on what matters. A payments company may value compliance and liquidity at 30% each. A consumer app might care more about developer experience and cost. Share the scorecard with finance and engineering teams so everyone owns the decision.
No research replaces actual testing. Run a pilot. Four to eight weeks. With clear goals. Process transactions across your key corridors. Track:
Pay close attention to how the provider reacts when issues happen. A pilot always uncovers something.. Their response tells you more than any marketing material. Do they communicate early? Do they take ownership. Fix the root cause?. Do you have to chase them?
Choosing an infrastructure provider isn’t about finding the flashiest tool. It’s about finding a partner. The right one handles complexity keeps funds safe settles consistently and stays out of your way while you build. The wrong one becomes a bottleneck that your users feel long before you do.
Start with your use case. Verify compliance and security in writing. Test liquidity with transactions. Model costs at scale. Evaluate developers firsthand.. Always always plan your exit. Do these things. You’ll make a choice that stands up to your board, auditors and customers.
Disclaimer: This article is, for purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial or investment advice. Always consult professionals before making business decisions.
Choosing a Stablecoin Infrastructure Provider was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Remember when buying Bitcoin meant a trip down a rabbit hole? Exchange signup, ID photos, a hardware wallet that arrives in the mail, and a 24-word phrase you’re told to write on paper and hide somewhere. Mess up any step and nobody is coming to help.
Then January 10, 2024 arrived. The SEC approved the first eleven spot Bitcoin ETFs, and all that hassle became optional. You could type a ticker into the same app where you hold your index funds and be done in thirty seconds.
Simple on the surface. Underneath, it’s a surprisingly busy machine. Let’s open the hood. I’ll keep the jargon light and the opinions honest, because this topic attracts plenty of hype in both directions.
It’s a fund that owns real Bitcoin and sells shares against it. The share price tracks Bitcoin, minus an annual fee. That’s it.
The “spot” part matters. Back in October 2021 the first Bitcoin ETFs launched, but they held futures contracts, and futures have to be swapped out every month. That rollover quietly eats returns, so those funds lagged the actual coin. Spot funds skip the problem.
The SEC said no to spot funds for about a decade. Its main worry was manipulation on crypto exchanges. Then a federal appeals court ruled in 2023 that the agency couldn’t approve futures funds while rejecting nearly identical spot ones. Awkward for the regulator, and the dam cracked soon after.
What you get as a buyer:
Nobody tells you how many companies touch a single share of IBIT. Here’s the short list.
Honestly, the authorized participants and market makers are the least famous and most important group here. Without them, the ETF price would wander.
Picture the ETF trading a little above its Bitcoin’s value because everyone wants in. Here’s what happens next.
Demand falls? Same thing in reverse. Shares get cancelled and Bitcoin goes back out.
This loop is why a healthy ETF almost never strays far from its holdings. When you do spot a big premium or discount, something is stressed.
Issuers went to war over price. Most settled between 0.2% and 0.3% a year, and a few waived fees entirely for a while. BlackRock offered a temporary discount on IBIT. Fidelity waived FBTC’s fee for the early months.
Grayscale was the odd one out. Its old trust, GBTC, was converting into an ETF and charged 1.5%, which looked silly next to everyone else. Money poured out for months, since holders stuck in the old structure finally had a cheaper exit.
Meanwhile IBIT raced ahead, collecting tens of billions faster than almost any ETF in history. The lesson: when products are nearly identical, people pick the name they trust and the lower price.
Whether Bitcoin deserves a place in portfolios is a separate debate. The ETFs just made it easy to join that debate with real money.
Easy doesn’t mean safe. Think about these before buying.
Neither is “right.” It depends on what you want.
If you want simplicity, retirement-account access and a regulated structure, the ETF fits. If you want full control, the ability to move coins anywhere and round-the-clock access, hold your own. A lot of people split the difference, and honestly that seems sensible.
Keep an eye on a few things:
Crypto invented the asset. Wall Street built the on-ramp. The result is a market where your neighbor can own Bitcoin without knowing what a private key is, and that’s both the whole point and the whole risk.
My advice, for what it’s worth: understand what’s inside the ticker, compare expense ratios, and don’t put in more than you can stomach losing. Bitcoin has humbled plenty of confident people, and an ETF wrapper won’t change its temperament.
So which camp are you in, ETF or your own wallet? I’d like to hear why in the comments.
Bitcoin ETFs Explained: Who Actually Runs This Thing? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
A founder I’ll call Dev launches a small booking app for salons. In week one, a customer pays for a haircut. Dev checks his dashboard, sees the money, and assumes payments are basically solved.
Then a chargeback arrives. Then a compliance email. Then a question from his payment provider that he can’t answer: who, exactly, is responsible here?
That question is why this article exists. ISO, PayFac and acquirer get tossed around like synonyms. They aren’t. Pick the wrong one and you’ll find out at the worst possible time.
Strip away the jargon and every card payment involves the same cast:
ISOs and PayFacs squeeze in on the merchant side. What separates them is who holds the license, who absorbs losses, and who owns the customer.
An acquirer is a licensed bank with direct membership in the card networks. It vets merchants, settles funds, and takes the fall when things break. If a merchant disappears owing thousands in chargebacks, the acquirer gets the call.
Going direct gets you the cheapest rates, but only at serious volume. Getting there means capital requirements, PCI DSS audits, and onboarding that can take weeks. Most small businesses never talk to one. Honestly, most wouldn’t enjoy it.
An Independent Sales Organization resells an acquirer’s services. It finds merchants, signs them up, and collects a slice of their processing fees for as long as they stay. It doesn’t hold funds and has no license of its own.
In practice that means:
This suits restaurants, clinics and corner shops, where a person answering the phone beats a well-documented API. Unglamorous. Effective.
A payment facilitator is a merchant of record that brings many small sellers under one master merchant account. Stripe and Square made the model famous. Instead of forms and a two-week wait, a PayFac can approve a seller in minutes using automated checks.
The price of that speed is responsibility. Fraud, chargebacks and sub-merchant compliance land on the PayFac first, and the acquirer holds it accountable. What you get back: control over checkout, pricing and payout timing, plus the customer data. For a software company, that’s the prize.
Think of a shopping mall. The acquirer owns the building and writes the lease rules. The ISO is the leasing agent who finds tenants and takes a commission. The PayFac is a master tenant who sublets small stalls to dozens of vendors, sets their terms, and answers to the owner when one of them causes trouble.
Every payment has layers: interchange to the issuer, network fees, then a markup on top. Who keeps that markup depends on the model.
That spread explains why so many software companies want in. Payments can turn a subscription product into a second business.
There’s no universal answer, but there are patterns.
The same mistakes keep showing up, and most are avoidable:
Which brings us back to Dev. He doesn’t need to become a PayFac yet. He needs PayFac-as-a-Service: PayFac-style onboarding while a partner handles underwriting, compliance and risk.
He launches faster, keeps a good chunk of the revenue, and can graduate to full PayFac status once volume justifies the bill.
Before committing to anything, sit down with these:
The boundaries are blurring. Big acquirers now sell embedded payments, ISOs are bolting on software, and PayFacs are chasing direct bank relationships. Card networks keep tightening sub-merchant onboarding rules too, so strong risk controls matter more every year.
These three aren’t rivals so much as layers of one stack. The acquirer builds the rails, the ISO sells access, and the PayFac wraps it all into something people actually enjoy using.
Match the model to your stage. New and small? Keep it simple. Payments central to revenue? Push for control. Massive volume? Talk to an acquirer directly. Get that call right early and payments stop being a headache.
ISO vs PayFac vs Acquirer: Who Actually Gets Paid When You Swipe? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Login