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
GM, This Friday, there’s a Blocktrend-exclusive perk! In the last podcast episode, I chatted with Michael, the CEO of CoolBitX, about their new product CoolWallet Go. After the episode aired, some members asked if there could be a group deal. Here are the details: This Friday from 10:00
GM, The world’s most widely used crypto wallet, MetaMask, has finally issued its own token! But instead of launching a governance token, it has introduced a U.S. dollar stablecoin called MetaMask USD (ticker: mUSD). With USDT and USDC already dominating the market, why does MetaMask feel the need
GM, Even people who’ve never bought cryptocurrency have probably heard of “mining.” Everyone says mining consumes huge amounts of electricity—some even steal power for it. But what exactly does mining do? The recent 51% attack on Monero offers the perfect case study. Monero is the world’s largest
GM, The podcast will be on pause tomorrow. Let’s get into today’s topic. The ETHA (iShares Ethereum Trust ETF), launched by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is now the world’s largest Ethereum ETF by market capitalization. Over the past 75 trading days, ETHA has seen
GM, ETH has risen 55% over the past 30 days, now just a step away from its all-time high of $4,800; BTC is also hovering around the $120,000 mark. At times like this, unless you’re already all in, it’s hard not to feel like, “I didn’
GM, Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order easing investment restrictions on the 401(k) retirement savings plan. This change allows employees working in the United States to invest their retirement funds in assets that were previously considered high-risk—such as real estate, private equity, and
GM, This article concerns the public interest. It is fully open and free to share. This week, Mega Financial Holding Chairman Ruey-Bin Tung made headlines after commenting on stablecoins in an interview. He said: “Taiwan already had a TWD stablecoin back in 2002 — it’s the EasyCard that everyone carries.
GM, Last week, online payments giant PayPal announced two new products: PayPal World and Pay with Crypto. As the name suggests, Pay with Crypto allows merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments. But PayPal World is even more practical — and more ambitious. It enables PayPal users to travel abroad without needing to
GM, Today’s piece is a bit of a change of pace—we’re diving into a tool that many of us use in everyday life. Recently, hardware wallet giant Ledger introduced a new backup solution for seed phrases: the Ledger Recovery Key digital backup card. Taiwan-based cold wallet company
GM, Today (July 30) marks the 10th anniversary of Ethereum's genesis. You can click to mint a limited-time commemorative NFT. Before diving in, let me share a short personal story. A Decade of Ethereum Ten years ago, I had just graduated from graduate school and officially shed my
GM, Yesterday’s discussion about SharpLink sparked some interesting comments under the article and on Facebook—points I hadn’t considered as a financial amateur. Definitely worth checking out. Also, we’re now including transcripts with the podcast so you can easily feed them into an AI for deeper discussion.
GM, Last week, the U.S. Congress passed three major cryptocurrency bills: * The GENIUS Act: Requires stablecoins to be backed by U.S. dollars or short-term Treasury bills. * The CLARITY Act: Clarifies jurisdiction over cryptocurrencies between the SEC and CFTC. * The Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act: Prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing
GM, MicroStrategy (MSTR) began purchasing BTC in 2020, sparking a wave 1 of corporate crypto acquisitions. Even Figma, the design company preparing for an IPO, disclosed in its prospectus that it holds Bitcoin ETFs worth a staggering $70 million. Public companies holding crypto is no longer news — in fact, many
GM, I’m happy to be back at work. Over the past two weeks, I participated in an interview, recorded two podcast episodes, and cleared a long backlog of to-dos. It might not seem like a break, but for me, getting long-pending tasks off my plate is the most relaxing
GM, Can you believe 2025 is already halfway over? Starting next week, Blocktrend will be taking its annual mid-year publishing break. That means four articles and two podcast episodes will be on pause—think of it like scheduled maintenance. Even though the car (my brain) still runs fine, we can’
GM, The Blocktrend Lifetime Membership campaign is underway. By popular demand, I’ve added a credit card payment option and extended the offer until Thursday, June 26 at 24:00. That said, I still encourage everyone to pay with cryptocurrency—don’t miss the rare chance to actually spend crypto.
GM, This is the 700th issue of Blocktrend. Whew — first, I want to thank you. Then, I want to thank myself. Recently, I updated the About page on Blocktrend: There are no ads here — this publication serves you. Traditional media make money from ads, so they chase traffic, not readers.
GM, Last year, Stripe—the leading brand in "online card readers"—acquired stablecoin API startup Bridge for $1.1 billion, ushering in a golden era for stablecoins. Last week, Stripe announced another acquisition of a crypto startup—embedded wallet developer Privy—with the aim of ending the dial-up
GM, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) took place this week. Most media coverage focused on AI features, but Apple’s progress in AI remains limited this year, and a smarter Siri still seems far off. It’s no wonder that many outlets are calling this year’s event
GM, Let's start with a quick survey: How many sets of wallet addresses do you currently have? POLL: How many sets of wallet addresses do you currently have? * 5 sets or fewer * 5 - 20 sets * More than 20 sets I'll admit, I'm one
GM, This post is a little push to get you excited about a newly launched crypto credit card: Ether.fi Cash. Normally, I only write about products I've personally tested over a longer period. But I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one for some time¹, and after just