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GM, Exactly one year ago, Stripe announced its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a startup providing stablecoin APIs — marking the largest acquisition in crypto history. At the end of my article back then, I wrote¹: The current model of cross-border remittance is built on the assumption that money itself
GM, Last weekend was Taiwan’s National Day holiday, but the cryptocurrency market went through a bloodbath. The turmoil began when Donald Trump suddenly announced a 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting November 1. The news triggered a global selloff—both in traditional markets and crypto. The Nasdaq Index plunged
GM, Bitcoin has once again hit a new all-time high — but do you remember exactly what the current ATH (All-Time High) is? I honestly can’t keep track anymore 😂 Ever since Bitcoin broke past $100,000, the price has started to feel “blurry.” I used to care about whether it
GM, If you’ve ever bought cryptocurrency, you’ve definitely run into the issue of how to move money in and out. “On-ramping” means converting New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) into crypto, while “off-ramping” is the reverse. This has always been the biggest barrier to entering the blockchain world. In Taiwan,
GM, Recently, all kinds of Digital Asset Treasury companies have been emerging in the market. Even TNL Mediagene, the parent group of well-known media platform The News Lens, has set up a digital asset committee to prepare for purchases of BTC, ETH, and SOL. But this party already seems to
GM, After the passage of the GENIUS 1 Act in the United States, stablecoins have become the hottest new startup trend. Some players are issuing stablecoins and pocketing 2 the yield themselves. Others are building dedicated blockchains to meet the speed requirements of everyday payments 3. But for people in
GM, AI can now do more and more, but there’s still one key capability it hasn’t unlocked: paying money. Today’s AI systems are mostly built on the assumption that “public = free 1.” They scrape whatever online content 2 they can find and skip over anything behind a
GM, Issuing stablecoins was once the most profitable business in the world. All an issuer had to do was deposit U.S. dollars in a bank, mint stablecoins for users, and then sit back collecting U.S. Treasury yields—true “sleep income.” With this model, Tether and Circle have effortlessly
GM, Taiwan’s banking sector has moved onto the blockchain. Last week, I invited Cathay Financial Holding for a recording session¹, where two guests, Cynthia and Jenny, pointed out that the draft Virtual Asset Service Act announced by Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission in March was the key turning point.
GM, Last week, payment giant Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm officially announced that they would jointly launch Tempo, a Layer 1 blockchain dedicated to payments. This marks the fourth major case of a large corporation building its own blockchain, following stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle 1, as well as
GM, Last month, in my article “To Chairman Jui-Bin Tung: EasyCard Is Not a Stablecoin, Here’s the Key Difference”, I discussed the fundamental distinctions between EasyCard and stablecoins. I made the piece public, hoping it could serve as a foundation for Taiwan’s conversation around stablecoins. Since its publication,
GM, For the past five years, every Blocktrend article has come with an audio recording. That was something I did after finishing the writing and editing — spending another half hour late at night to record the narration. Over time, it has added up to more than 400 recordings. Starting this