TL;DR 👀
“Stablecoin payments” are only fast when the banking layer behind them is solid. Onchain transfer is the easy part.
Crypto cards have real product market fit but they sit inside a compliance and tax box that crypto cannot dodge.
Solana's largest lending platform wants to sell picks and shovels to institutions and consumer apps.
The hidden banking layer behind stablecoin payments
Stabledash ran a piece that’s worth forwarding internally to anyone who thinks stablecoins are “just faster SWIFT.”
The core point: behind every onchain transfer there’s a fiat engine that decides whether the payment succeeds, how long it takes, and what it costs. The “engine” is things like banking partners, prefunded accounts, compliance ops, payout rails, FX, reconciliation, and failure handling. If any of that breaks, your stablecoin product breaks, even if the blockchain works fine.
What to watch next:
Stablecoin infra companies that look less like “wallets” and more like banking platforms (accounts, treasury, risk, reporting) will keep winning enterprise deals, because enterprises buy reliability and auditability, not block times.
A lot of “stablecoin payments growth” will track the same old constraint: access to good banking and good local payout rails.
USDT supply is around $200B
Crypto cards: the bridge product, and the custody fight behind it
Stablewatch dropped a long research piece on crypto payment cards: cards started as a retention tool for exchanges, but they’re turning into a strategic battle over user custody and distribution.
A few concrete details that help anchor the space:
Stablewatch estimates crypto cards are at roughly a $13B annual run rate, which is too big to dismiss as a gimmick.
The market splits into custodial cards (exchange-style, easier UX) and non-custodial cards (spend from a wallet, closer to crypto’s ethos).
Even the most crypto-native card still depends on Visa or Mastercard rails, which forces KYC/AML and issuer controls. Stablewatch calls this a “decentralization paradox.”
TradFi angle: this is basically “open loop card issuance with a new funding source,” plus new complexity around crypto tax treatment and conversions. Stablewatch explicitly calls out tax/accounting friction as a major underappreciated limiter.
Also relevant: Visa has kept pushing stablecoin-linked card programs (example: Visa + Bridge in LatAm), which is the cleanest proof that the card networks see stablecoins as another funding rail, not as an existential threat.
What to watch next:
The category likely shifts from “cards as a standalone product” to “cards as a feature” inside crypto-native neobanks that bundle yield, credit, and treasury. Stablewatch explicitly predicts this packaging trend.
Infrastructure providers (issuers and program managers) will matter more than consumer brands. If you want a concrete example of what that looks like, Rain markets itself as a stablecoin-powered cards and payments infrastructure provider for platforms and fintechs.
The bearish take: “crypto cards don’t have any future”
“Crypto cards are transitional”.
If you’re new to the category, “crypto cards” are debit or credit cards that let you fund spending with crypto balances. In most setups, your crypto is converted into fiat at the edge, then the transaction runs through the normal card stack.
The bearish view is simple: this does not move payments onto crypto rails. It keeps you inside Visa or Mastercard and a bank issuer, with the same gatekeepers and the same compliance surface. The card networks and issuers still define the rules, can freeze programs, and can deplatform entire businesses. So instead of replacing the card networks, crypto cards often strengthen them by adding crypto as another funding source.
There’s also an economics problem. Adding a conversion layer usually means extra take-rates: spreads, top-up fees, withdrawals, custody fees, sometimes yield skims. Each one can look small, but together they compound. And if your motivation was “bankless” or privacy, the product reality conflicts with the narrative: KYC is required, and spending becomes tightly linkable to identity.
What to watch next:
Direct stablecoin checkout from wallets, where merchants get paid in stablecoins and the card conversion step disappears.
Cards that behave more like a credit line against crypto collateral (borrow against assets, spend the loan), since the core value prop becomes credit and tax handling rather than “spend crypto.”
Margin compression and commoditization: if issuance becomes easy via Card-as-a-Service providers, many consumer card brands end up as distribution wrappers with limited defensibility.
Kamino’s Next Chapter: selling picks and shovels to institutions
Quick context:
Kamino is a Solana DeFi protocol that combines lending, liquidity, and leverage products in one stack.
Kamino has $2.5B TVL (TVL is the value deposited into the protocol’s smart contracts, basically net deposits).
The announcement: Kamino introduced six products aimed at fixed-rate credit, intent-based borrowing, and RWAs, plus an API/SDK distribution play (“BuildKit”).
Fixed Rates: DeFi lending is mostly floating-rate. Fixed-rate is closer to how real borrowers think, and it makes cash-flow modeling possible. Kamino says it will pilot with FalconX.
Borrow Intents: instead of taking whatever the pool rate is, borrowers can post parameters (term, rate, collateral) and lenders fill. That’s a move toward market-based credit pricing rather than pure curve math.
Off-Chain Collateral: the big institutional wedge. Borrow onchain while assets remain in qualified custody. Kamino says it’s building with Chainlink, with an initial collateral-management integ
ration with Anchorage Digital and a pilot borrower mentioned.
Private Credit vaults: routing funds into offchain lending operations with custodians, reporting, audits. That’s basically onchain distribution for an offchain credit book.
RWA DEX: oracle-priced liquidity for tokenized assets so issuers do less market-making ops.
BuildKit: an explicit “embed yield and credit in your wallet or neobank” pitch, with revenue share for integrators.
What to watch next:
Offchain collateral and private credit introduce counterparty and reporting trust questions. If Kamino nails transparency and failure modes, it becomes a serious fintech distribution layer. If not, it stays a crypto-native venue.