Software is disrupting banking and financial services. For a fraction of a cent, stablecoins facilitate transactions at the speed of the internet. The total stablecoin market capitalization (excluding algorithmic) reached an all-time high of $168.49 billion in September 2024, surpassing the previous record of $167.55 billion in March 2022. Circle USDC and Tether USDT comprise 20.48% and 70.25% of the market share respectively. This trajectory reflects the increasing importance of stablecoins and tokenized products in the global financial system.

PayPal, the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch a stablecoin, PYUSD surpassed $1 billion in August 2024 and is now the sixth largest stablecoin by market capitalization. PayPal launched PYUSD on Solana in May 2024. Since launch the market capitalization of PYUSD on Solana increased from zero to $663.65 billion over the course of three months. PYUSD initialized a feature called “confidential transfers”, which offers merchants the ability to “provide confidentiality for transaction amounts to their consumers while maintaining visibility for regulatory purposes”. This advancement on Solana brings public blockchains closer to the privacy expectations of today’s commerce.

Wall Street continues to claim territory on permissionless blockchains with the issuance of tokenized products by traditional financial giants. The tokenization of U.S. Treasuries on permissionless networks increased over 1787% from $113,937,099 in January 2023 to $2,150,200,069 in September 2024. The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) and Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) products account for $517,200,069 and $427,383,039 in market capitalization respectively.

Franklin Templeton launched the first tokenized money market fund, FOBXX on Stellar in 2021 and since deployed on Polygon, Arbitrum, and Avalanche.  BlackRock’s BUIDL deployed on Ethereum in 2024. Tokenized U.S. treasuries are deployed on over 11 permissionless networks including Ethereum, Stellar, Solana, and Mantle with $1.60B, $437.00M, $60.60M, and $32.40M in market capitalization respectively. The future is multichain.

Digital Ownership in the Creator Economy

Our articles have migrated to Paragraph.xyz, a Web3 publishing platform. Paragraph represents a paradigm shift towards a user-owned version of the web, where members of a community are able to collect digital content from creators in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). Paragraph provides creators the ability to engage their community via token-gating strategies and distribution of content to wallet addresses via XMTP, a wallet-to-wallet communication protocol enabling message ownership. Imagine email and messenger platforms without the walled gardens. From the tokenization of real-world assets to novel forms of community engagement, new business models are evolving on Web3 daily.

DISCLAIMER: This material is for informational purposes only and not intended to provide financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Information is strictly educational and not an endorsement or solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to participate in any investment or trading strategy. No representation or warranty is made, express or implied, as to the accuracy and completeness of the information. Links to third-party websites in the material do not imply endorsement. Please consult with your own accountant, attorney, investment or other certified professional advisor in relation to any investment decision.