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2 days ago
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his Treasury Department is continuing at a “deliberate speed” in establishing the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Appearing before Congress last Wednesday, Bessent called the process complicated, but ultimately progressing. "We are making sure that as we are doing this in this complicated process, we use best practices and things will be durable for the future," he said.
This is the first update from Bessent about the strategic Bitcoin reserve in several months. His comments come as Patrick Witt, the chief crypto advisor to the White House, has suggested multiple times that announcements are upcoming. For example, in late April, he said a “big announcement” on the reserve would come “in the next few weeks.” Witt has been working with others on the reserve over the past year.
As a reminder, in March of last year, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve and separate digital asset stockpile. Both the reserve and stockpile are made up of digital assets already owned by the government through criminal or civil forfeitures. Until further updates arise, the reserve is limited to passively holding its seized cryptocurrencies rather than actively buying more.
Venice (VVV) climbed to an all-time high above $30 last week, with the AI privacy project continuing its momentum generated in recent months.
Venice is best understood as a private version of ChatGPT. It offers users access to text, image, audio, video and other AI capabilities, with an emphasis on user privacy and reduced censorship. The VVV token is used for staking, premium platform access, and more.
The project is co-founded and led by Erik Voorhees, a prominent and long-standing figure in the crypto space. Venice’s team has been expanding this year as it manages a growing active user base, which hit 3 million in May. Appearing on the ‘Market Bubble’ podcast last week, Voorhees revealed that Venice is “growing 15% a month in actual revenue numbers and paying users.”
A new report from CoinDesk Research shows that the total value of real-world assets (RWAs) represented onchain reached $45.5 billion ($28.9 billion USD) in May, the tenth consecutive monthly all-time high. RWAs are traditional assets like government bonds, property, or commodities that have been digitised and placed on a blockchain. As shown below, bonds (in particular tokenised U.S. Treasuries) are the most common type of RWAs. BlackRock, Circle and Ondo Finance (ONDO) are currently among the leading providers of tokenised U.S. treasuries.
Both milestones suggest growing confidence among financial institutions and everyday users in onchain infrastructure. More value flowing into stablecoins and tokenised assets generally increases the liquidity available across decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms, which helps keep onchain settlement fast and cheap.
Payments giant Mastercard announced plans to expand its settlement capabilities, allowing selected issuers and acquirers to settle certain card transactions using regulated stablecoins. The new capabilities include intraday, weekend and holiday settlement, giving partners more flexibility in managing liquidity and timing across both fiat and onchain settlement options.
The stablecoin settlement option will support several regulated stablecoins, including Circle’s USDC, PayPal’s PYUSD and Ripple’s RLUSD. Mastercard said these assets will be enabled across supported blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Canton, Tempo and the XRP Ledger.
The rollout adds to a broader wave of stablecoin adoption among major payments and remittance firms. Visa has continued expanding its own stablecoin settlement pilots, while MoneyGram and Western Union have recently announced stablecoin initiatives.
