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- VISA Make BVNK Investment and Ripple try to Buy Circle
VISA Make BVNK Investment and Ripple try to Buy Circle
AND... Stablecoins hit alll time high supplies, and Coinbase launches x402
Simon Taylor & Jeremy Batchelder
May 07, 2025
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Introduction
Welcome to the Tokenized newsletter, brought to you by the creators of the Tokenized Podcast; Simon Taylor of Fintech Brainfood and Pet Berisha of Sporting Crypto, written by Jeremy Batchelder.
We are the newsletter for institutions that need help preparing for a Tokenized future.
We run through the headlines every week, what it means for you and a market readout. Always with an institutional, business-focused perspective.
Join us every week as we meet your Tokenization needs.
Stories You Can't Miss 📰
💳 Visa Ventures Invests in Stablecoin Infrastructure Provider BVNK
BVNK, a global stablecoin infrastructure platform, has announced a strategic investment from Visa, marking a significant endorsement from one of the world's leading payment networks.
Key Points:
The investment follows BVNK's $50 million Series B fundraise in December 2024, which was led by Haun Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Avenir, and Tiger Global
Stablecoin adoption is accelerating rapidly, with $27 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume globally across 1.25 billion transactions in 2024, according to Visa Onchain Analytics
BVNK processes over $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd, helping them send, receive, convert, and store stablecoins and fiat
BVNK has expanded to the United States in 2025, opening offices in San Francisco and New York, with leadership from former BlockFi and Cross River executives
The Tokenized Take:
Signalling value: Visa's investment represents significant validation from a traditional payments giant, signaling that stablecoins are becoming an essential part of the global financial infrastructure
New meets old: Visa positioning itself at the intersection of traditional and decentralized finance. Partnering with modern wallets and new payment flows, while also providing VTAP to help traditional banks get into stablecoins.
Every payments player wants a stablecoin story: This investment comes as major payment networks race to integrate with stablecoin infrastructure providers, with Mastercard announcing multiple stablecoin partnerships just last week.
💰 Ripple Makes Multi-Billion Dollar Bid for Circle, Gets Rejected
Ripple reportedly made a substantial acquisition offer for USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, but was turned down as Circle pursues its NYSE listing plans.
Key Points:
Bloomberg reported that Ripple made a $4-5 billion bid for Circle, which Circle rejected as being too low
Circle filed documentation earlier this month to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange
Despite generating $1.67 billion in revenue in 2024, Circle earned just $156 million in profit, with 60% of revenues going to distributors, particularly Coinbase
Ripple recently launched RLUSD stablecoin, which has reached a $300 million market cap, while Circle's USDC has a significantly larger $61 billion issuance
The Tokenized Take:
Strategic market positioning: Ripple's bid makes strategic sense as they want to position themselves as the dominant US based stablecoin issuer leveraging USDC’s adoption and distribution
Institutional acquisition race: Following its recent $1.25 billion acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road, Ripple's bid for Circle demonstrates its determination to acquire key assets in the stablecoin ecosystem
Circle's founder commitment: Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire seems unlikely to be interested in an acquisition by Ripple, however, this may have started a bidding war amongst other deep pocketed entities
🤖 Coinbase launches x402 a new standard for internet payments
x402 lets developers and AI agents pay for APIs, services, and software directly with stablecoins over HTTP. With just a few lines of code, x402 offers built-in authentication, automatic settlement
Key Points:
X402 is launching with partners like AWS, Anthropic, Circle and NEAR
The goal is to simplify monetization and unlock micropayments by “simplifying real-time monetization by removing friction around registrations, authentication, and complex signatures.”
The goal is to give AI Agent users the ability to confidently buy online, while agent developers “developers collect revenue through cross-chain settlements that make blockchain complexity invisible.”
The Tokenized Take:
Everyone is trying to figure out agentic commerce: Visa and Mastercard both launched their “agent tokenization” toolkits last week, Stripe and PayPal both have a story about how they enable AI Agents.
Almost everyone agrees we need an internet upgrade: There is no “HTTPS for agents.” There’s no way to be confident that the right agent is on the right website and has authority to make a payment. Stablecoins and wallets would work but there’s no single, universal interface.
Does this compliment or compete with Agent Tokenization? In recent decades we ended up delivering things like subscriptions and mobile payments with “tokenization” (not that kind of token though).
💸 Stablecorner ⚖️ → Artemis' April 2025
The stablecoin ecosystem has reached a significant milestone with total circulating supply surpassing $230 billion, representing a 64% increase year-over-year according to Artemis research. This remarkable growth has been distributed across multiple blockchain networks, with Ethereum leading the expansion at +$50 billion, followed by TRON (+$18 billion) and Solana (+$10 billion).
Among USD-backed stablecoins, USDF, RLUSD, and USDY are showing the strongest growth, with monthly change rates of 74.95%, 66.75%, and 57.22% respectively.
Binance has dramatically increased its USDC holdings, with supply up 266% since November 2024.
In the emerging non-USD stablecoin sector, Euro-denominated tokens now dominate with over 80% of the market. Circle's EURC has established itself as the clear leader, driving the majority of growth with steady adoption across Base, Solana, and Ethereum. The non-USD stablecoin market has now exceeded $500 million in total value, though this remains a small fraction of the overall stablecoin ecosystem. With strong fiat-to-crypto exchange volumes for currencies like KRW (Korean won), GBP (British pound), and BRL (Brazilian real), we may soon see additional non-USD stablecoins gaining meaningful traction in the market.
📰 Some More News:
🏦 Tokenization, Stablecoins & Finance
Coinbase launches x402 to make stablecoin payments internet native and ready for AI Agents (Read more - Here)
Stablecoin payments are now live in the App store via Mesh (Read more - Here)
Visa and Bridge partner on stablecoin-linked cards (Read more - Here)
Sony’s Soneium blockchain to offer tokenized Treasuries, private credit via Plume link (Read more - Here)
Tether’s U.S.-Focused Stablecoin Could Launch Later This Year, CEO Paolo Ardoino Says (Read more - Here)
Playtron unveils Game Dollar stablecoin in collaboration with M0 and Bridge, expected to power upcoming SuiPlay handheld console (Read more - Here)
World and Circle are bringing native USDC and Cross Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) V2 to the most distributed network of humans (Read more - Here)
Tether Approaching $120B in U.S. Treasuries, Confirms Quarterly Operating Profit Over $1B, and Strengthens Global USD₮ Demand in Q1 2025 (Read more - Here)
Athena Labs is introducing the product for a billion people (Read more - Here)
🤑 Funding and M&A
💼 Government & Policy
UAE’s largest bank FAB to launch stablecoin, partnering sovereign investor ADQ, IHC (Read more - Here)
IRS' Crypto Leads Are Leaving the Agency After Accepting DOGE Deals (Read more - Here)
Stablecoin Bill faces opposition from Democratic Party (Read more - Here)
The momentum behind tokenized assets is now impossible to ignore, prompting the US Treasury to weigh in (Read more - Here)
Simon’s Market Readout 💬
A pixelated Simon gives you his market readout for the week.  | What do you think the total percentage of crypto activity is suspected money laundering? In TradFi, it’s estimated to be between 1 and 3%. I say estimate because we have no idea. The existing system is fragmented, built for paper, and regularly has “whoopsie” moments that result in $100bn + sums going to Mexican cartels or foreign governments. In the crypto world it's closer to 0.14% suspected money laundering. That is far lower, and it's a number that’s far more accurate. This is the inherent value of the technology; it’s incredibly easy to “follow the money” as value moves between wallets. Being able to follow the money doesn’t always mean identifying the thief, but it does mean knowing what happened. In the world of finance, our choice is between flying blind and hitting banks with a big fine after the fact. Or seeing the ugly truth in tokenization and blockchain networks. It’s this transparency that has, ironically in my view, given crypto a “reputation problem” - Every dark net market, every bad actor, nation state that steals money (e.g., from Bybit recently) can be seen in full daylight, full audience participation. The horrible part of this irony is that if we want better finance, we need this transparency, but view it as more risky. And, don’t get me wrong, there are giant issues with the levels of criminality in crypto (and the fact payments are often irrevocable, so stolen funds can never be recovered). But these are solvable problems. And we should solve them. |
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