Singapore-based fintech company Nium has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to integrate the USDC stablecoin into its global payment network.

 

The integration, announced this week, leverages Coinbase’s custody, liquidity, and wallet infrastructure, allowing Nium’s clients and users to perform cross-border payments in USDC and settle transactions in either stablecoins or local currencies.

 

 

As Coinbase will provide the wallet infrastructure, Nium clients will be able to fund accounts in USDC within a Coinbase wallet embedded in the Nium platform. The USDC can then be converted to fiat currency by Coinbase and paid out through Nium, all within a single workflow on the platform.

 

Through this partnership, Nium will enable end-to-end stablecoin-to-fiat payment flows that allow users to send, receive, and convert stablecoins into fiat across more than 190 countries within a single platform.

 

Speaking about the partnership, Prajit Nanu, CEO of Nium, said it is aimed at providing clients with a more efficient way to move and manage money globally. He added that the collaboration improves capital efficiency while supporting a future in which stablecoins play a central role in Nium’s payment stack.

 

About Nium 

Based in Singapore, Nium is a cross-border payments company that allows users, including retail and institutional clients, to perform cross-border remittances and transactions.

 

Apart from being a core traditional finance company, Nium has in the past made several pro-crypto moves, especially in the stablecoin space.

 

In March of this year, it launched a stablecoin card issuance platform that allows companies holding stablecoins to issue spending cards on both the Visa and Mastercard networks through a single API integration on its platform. To enable USDC settlements on its platform, Nium last year participated in Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot, which eventually made it possible for the company to settle cross-border transactions using stablecoins across different supported blockchain networks.

 

Like Nium, several other Singapore-based traditional finance companies have taken pro-crypto steps in recent times, integrating blockchain technology and crypto support into their platforms. Notable among them is DBS Bank, Singapore’s largest bank, which launched the DBS Digital Exchange, a platform for asset tokenization, crypto trading, and custody.

 

Cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken, OKX, Binance, and Bybit, have also partnered with traditional finance institutions to help bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance.

 

 

DoorDash, the food delivery platform that processed nearly $75 billion in merchant sales last year, is partnering with Tempo, the blockchain built by payments giant Stripe and crypto investment firm Paradigm, to roll out stablecoin-powered payouts. The move represents one of the most significant deployments of crypto payment rails by a consumer-facing tech company to date, and it signals just how serious mainstream firms are getting about on-chain money movement.

The announcement, made Tuesday in a Tempo blog post, puts DoorDash alongside Stripe itself, Coastal Community Bank, and Latin American fintech ARQ as companies now running or preparing to run parts of their payment operations on stablecoin rails through Tempo. DoorDash is focusing initially on cross-border flows, where settlement speed and cost are the biggest pain points. Exact timing for when those payouts go live has not been disclosed.

 

What Is Tempo?

Tempo is not just another blockchain project. It launched publicly last month after a private testnet phase, backed by a $500 million funding round that valued the company at $5 billion. Stripe and Paradigm are the founding investors, with Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang leading a dedicated team. The chain is engineered specifically for payment workloads, targeting over 100,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality. Fees can be paid in any stablecoin rather than a native token, something that sets it apart from general-purpose chains like Ethereum or even high-throughput alternatives like Solana, which Stripe CEO Patrick Collison has said do not meet the company's throughput or payment-specific requirements.

 

The chain is EVM-compatible and built on Reth, an Ethereum execution client developed by Paradigm. It includes dedicated payment lanes, opt-in transaction privacy, support for memos and access lists, and an enshrined automated market maker to ensure stablecoin neutrality. No single issuer gets a home-field advantage on Tempo's rails, which is important for institutions wary of becoming dependent on any one stablecoin ecosystem.

 

Why DoorDash, and Why Now

DoorDash operates in more than 40 countries, and getting money across borders has historically meant dealing with fragmented regional banking rails, slow settlement windows, and fees that eat into merchant margins. Stablecoins offer a straightforward fix for that, at least in theory. "There's real promise with stablecoins transforming financial infrastructure," DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang said in a statement tied to the announcement.

 

Beyond merchant payouts, Tempo is also working with DoorDash on a separate option that would let delivery workers get paid directly in stablecoins. That would be a notable shift for the gig economy, where payroll timing and cross-border income access are persistent problems for workers in markets outside the U.S.

 

Stripe's Bigger Blockchain Play

This deal sits inside a much larger strategic bet Stripe has been building for a while. The company acquired stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024, then bought crypto wallet provider Privy. It launched stablecoin financial accounts in 101 countries in May 2025, and has since introduced stablecoin subscription payments for U.S. businesses through USDC on Base and Polygon. Stripe processes close to $2 trillion in payment flows annually, and its head of Connect and money management, Neetika Bansal, has framed Tempo as the vehicle for making global payments "fast, cheap and borderless."

 

Tempo went live on mainnet last month with infrastructure partners including Mastercard, UBS, Klarna, and Visa already on board. Klarna even launched a bank-issued stablecoin on Tempo to enable cheaper cross-border settlement. The chain is also part of Stripe's pitch for agentic payments, the idea that AI systems will eventually need to transact autonomously at high volume, and that existing financial rails simply aren't built for that.

 

Stablecoin Interest Is Exploding

Stablecoins are now a $300 billion asset class, and the broader interest from corporate America is unmistakable. Meta, Google, and X are all reportedly exploring stablecoin integrations of their own. Circle, the issuer of USDC, recently completed a successful initial public offering, giving the sector another credibility boost. Tempo is also launching a Stablecoin Advisory service to offer hands-on support for firms looking to move payment flows on-chain, with what the company describes as "forward-deployed" engineers working directly inside client organizations.

 

Visa, OnePay, Felix, Fifth Third Bank, and Howard Hughes Holdings are also among the companies bringing payment operations onto Tempo's rails, according to information shared with Fortune. The competition is building too. Fireblocks launched a network in late 2025 positioning itself as a stablecoin SWIFT for institutions, and Google is developing its own Universal Ledger for financial assets.

 

For DoorDash, the bet is fairly straightforward: better rails mean cheaper, faster payouts for merchants and workers, which is a competitive advantage in a market where delivery platforms are fighting hard for both. No one can say if this stablecoin deal moves the needle, but the economics are pretty hard to argue with.

 

Coinbase dropped a new public discovery tool aimed at making it easier for both people and AI agents to find and use paid online services that settle instantly with crypto micropayments.

 

The platform went live today at agentic.market and works as an open directory for thousands of services built on the x402 protocol. You can jump in and browse immediately without login, API keys, nothing like that required. It pulls fresh data straight from real payments moving through Coinbase’s Developer Platform, so you see live pricing, how much volume each service is actually getting, how many different users are paying, and the latest activity timestamps. This release picks up right where Coinbase left off with its Agentic Wallets back in February, which first let AI agents hold their own funds and spend them independently. 

 

The x402 Bazaar is where paid online services show up once they’re set up with the right discovery info and start receiving payments, so you don’t have to submit a separate listing. It acts as x402’s backend index, tracking what’s available, how it’s priced, and what’s happening on-chain, while Agentic.Market turns that into a public marketplace where people and AI agents can easily search, compare, and plug these services into their workflows. This includes things like AI model runs, data and analytics feeds, media tools for images and video, search and scraping services, social and messaging integrations, core infrastructure like storage and compute, and even trading tools for moving assets around. Coinbase says the protocol is built so both humans and machines can pay programmatically for things like paid APIs, pay‑per‑call tools, and agents buying access at runtime, so the whole setup is really about making it simple.

 

 

Coinbase noted that the x402 protocol already has more than 165 million transactions and moved roughly 50 million dollars in volume, with over 480,000 agents actively taking part across around 100,000 services. The directory puts the busiest and most reliable ones front and center, which helps both humans and machines figure out what is actually getting real traction day to day. 

 

This is about smoothing out the little daily frictions that slow down building, and rolling out useful agents that can move naturally between on-chain steps like shifting assets or chasing better yields and off-chain jobs like running inference or grabbing fresh data, all paid for through in stablecoins. Teams handling internal automation or tools that face customers now have one, clean spot with data to check out providers without digging through random docs or dealing with payment mismatches. Work in DeFi or tokenization gets clearer ways to add agent driven logic that works natively instead of forcing awkward bridges or extra steps.

 

This is still early, so real momentum will come down to more services jumping on the x402 standard and agents getting better at handling payment details and safety checks on their own. Even with that, the way it indexes itself automatically and stays completely open shows Coinbase leaning toward letting the ecosystem expand through actual use rather than any kind of control. Groups that start implementing x402 features into their agents today could end up in a much better spot, as these machine-to-machine payments become normal.

 

 

Global payments giant Visa has launched a validator node on Tempo’s Layer 1 blockchain network, enabling it to participate directly in the verification and processing of transactions on the network.

 

The validator role follows a six month collaboration between Visa and Tempo’s engineering team, which worked to integrate Visa’s secure infrastructure into the Tempo network. According to Visa, the validator will be configured and managed in house.

 

With the integration of Visa’s infrastructure into the Tempo network, Visa joins Stripe and Zodia Custody as the first external validators to verify and process transactions on the Tempo blockchain, with more validators expected in the future.

 

 

Since Visa processes billions of transactions globally, its role as an anchor validator places it in a crucial position in securing Tempo’s blockchain and strengthening its resilience, reliability and performance for stablecoin payment use cases.

 

Speaking on the collaboration, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said the move highlights Visa’s role in supporting the development of stablecoin payment systems and its commitment to reliability, security, and trust in blockchain networks.

 

What is Tempo Layer-1 Blockchain? 

Tempo is a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain designed for large-scale stablecoin payments and other real-world financial applications. Although Tempo was initially incubated by Stripe and the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, it became an independent company with its own team, Tempo Labs, in September 2025.

 

Unlike most Layer 1 blockchains, which are designed for general-purpose decentralized finance activity, the Tempo blockchain was designed for fast, low-cost, and reliable stablecoin transfers that traditional blockchains often struggle to support under high load.

 

The Tempo blockchain was also designed for agentic and machine-to-machine commerce. Through Stripe’s Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), the Tempo network enables autonomous AI agents to make payments and conduct other real-world commerce activities without human intervention.

 

Visa Intensifies Push for Blockchain Adoption

Visa remains one of the few traditional finance (TradFi) giants spearheading global adoption and integration of blockchain technology into TradFi payment infrastructure. Similar to its most recent Tempo validator role, in March of this year, Visa became the first major payment company to serve as a super validator on Canton Network, a privacy-focused institutional blockchain network, with plans to also become one of the validators on Circle’s Arc blockchain.

 

It has also expanded its push for blockchain-based payments, including the launch of USDC settlement on Solana for US residents, enabling support for four stablecoins on its platform, and powering over 130 stablecoin card programs in more than 40 countries.

 

 

 

Blockchain infrastructure company Paxos Labs has raised 12 million dollars in a strategic funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Robot Ventures, Maelstrom, and Uniswap.

 

According to Paxos Labs, the funds will be used to accelerate the development of Amplify, its new financial utility platform across three integrated modules: Earn, which offers institutional-grade yield on digital assets, Borrow, which enables digital asset-backed lending, and Mint, which supports branded stablecoin issuance.

 

According to Chad Cascarilla, chief executive officer of Paxos, Amplify is the infrastructure that makes it possible for users to benefit from the digital assets they hold, be it earning yields on stablecoins, offering crypto-backed borrowing or launching a branded stablecoin. So, by a single integration, Amplify allows users to use and benefit fully from the digital assets they own.

 

How Amplify Works

Amplify is Paxos Labs’ flagship product that enables enterprise fintech and crypto platforms to turn users’ idle digital assets into active on-chain crypto products. To use Amplify, enterprises need to integrate Amplify’s software development kit (SDK) into their platforms.

 

Once integrated, platforms can configure and activate any of the three modules available on Amplify. Paxos Labs, through Amplify, handles all behind-the-scenes activities, including compliance and enterprise controls, after which it programmatically shares a portion of the revenue generated from user activity back with the integrating platform.

 

Through this strategic seed round, Paxos aims to scale the Amplify suite, expand the platform’s capabilities, and onboard more partners, in addition to some of its institutional partners, including privacy-focused blockchain project Aleo, Toku, and neobanking platform Hyperbeat. Hyperbeat surpassed $510,000 in assets under management within days of going live on Amplify. Paxos Labs has processed over $180 billion in tokenization volume for its institutional clients.

 

Enterprise DeFi Utilities Face Growing Competition

DeFi lending has continued to gain momentum, particularly among institutions and large enterprises. At the start of the year, on-chain lending TVL reached $64.3 billion, accounting for 40 to 55 percent of the total DeFi TVL. Like Paxos, several institutional DeFi lending platforms have expanded their DeFi services.

 

In March of this year, Anchorage Digital expanded its Atlas institutional network to include full collateral management services for crypto-backed lending and credit providers. It also integrated with the Solana-based platform Kamino to allow institutions to use natively staked SOL as collateral without leaving qualified custody.

 

Maple Finance, an institutional DeFi lending platform, also launched on the Base network to bring institutional-grade on-chain credit and yield products to the Coinbase ecosystem, with the aim of targeting exchanges, fintechs, and neobanks within that ecosystem.

 

Most recently this month, Aave passed a binding “Aave Will Win” vote that granted Aave Labs $25 million to accelerate development, including V4 upgrades, permissioned markets, and institutional products.

 

 

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Hong Kong’s primary banking regulator, has issued its first stablecoin issuer licenses to the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Anchorpoint Financial Limited, in line with the city’s new stablecoin framework.

 

The licenses, which were granted on April 10, represent the first batch issued under Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance framework. The process was competitive, involving 36 applicants, with selections based on several factors, including risk management, credible use cases, and compliance readiness.

 

With these licenses granted, HSBC, one of Hong Kong’s largest and oldest banks, and Anchorpoint Financial Limited, a joint financial venture led by Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT), and Animoca Brands, are now a step closer to achieving their stablecoin plans.

 

HSBC plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin by the second half of 2026. The stablecoin will maintain a one-to-one peg with the Hong Kong dollar and will be backed by high-quality liquid assets held in segregated accounts. It will also be integrated into two of HSBC’s consumer applications, the PayMe app, which already has more than 3.3 million users, and the HSBC HK Mobile Banking app.

 

With this integration, HSBC users will be able to perform peer-to-peer transfers and peer-to-merchant payments using the Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin directly within HSBC applications.

 

Anchorpoint Financial Limited also plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin, with its first rollout expected this quarter. While the stablecoin is intended to support the digital economy, including cross-border and local payments, Anchorpoint’s initial focus will be on institutional investors and business partners, with retail users to follow at a later stage.

 

With this first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses and additional approvals underway, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority aims to address financial challenges in Hong Kong and support the development of the city’s digital asset industry.

 

“The granting of stablecoin issuer licenses is an important milestone for the development of digital assets in Hong Kong. We look forward to the issuers launching their businesses according to their plans, exploring growth opportunities while properly managing risks,” said Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the HKMA. “We hope their promotion of regulated stablecoins will address pain points in financial and economic activities, create value for both individuals and businesses, and support the healthy development of digital assets in Hong Kong.”

 

Hong Kong Stablecoin Ordinance

The Hong Kong Stablecoin Ordinance is a regulatory framework passed into law by Hong Kong's Legislative Council in August 2025. The framework establishes a comprehensive licensing and supervisory regime specifically for fiat-backed stablecoins.

 

Under this framework, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority sets standards for stablecoin issuers seeking licenses in the jurisdiction. These include requirements related to financial resources, reserve assets, risk management, and anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism compliance, among others.

 

Although Hong Kong’s stablecoin regime is considered one of the strictest in the world, it is designed to promote trust and support the long term adoption of stablecoins rather than allow unregulated growth that could ultimately lead to systemic risks.

 

 

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has secured the Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australia’s main financial regulator, expanding its services beyond cryptocurrencies.

 

With the AFSL license secured, Coinbase Australia Pty Ltd, the exchange’s Australian entity, will be the first cryptocurrency exchange in Australia to offer non-crypto retail derivatives.

 

 

According to John O'Loghlen, the regional managing director for APAC and Australia country director at Coinbase, the expansion will begin with Coinbase offering crypto and equity perpetuals to its Australian users, followed by future expansion into futures, options, and stock trading, all of which will be made available through the Coinbase Wallet app.

 

With this planned expansion, Coinbase will be competing directly with traditional finance companies already offering these non-crypto derivatives, including IG Markets, CMC Markets, and Pepperstone, which serve hundreds of thousands of users. Nevertheless, according to O'Loghlen, Coinbase will be leveraging the speed and execution advantages of crypto.

 

Review of Coinbase Activity in Australia

Since its entry into the Australian crypto market in 2016, Coinbase has performed fairly well, particularly given that Australia is known for high cryptocurrency adoption, with about 33 percent of Australians reportedly having been exposed to cryptocurrencies.

 

In 2022, Coinbase expanded from offering basic crypto services to establishing a local Australian entity, Coinbase Australia Pty Ltd, which was registered with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing regulator and financial intelligence agency.

 

Through its Australian entity, headed by John O’Loghlen, Coinbase began offering PayID support for fast Australian dollar transfers, advanced trading features, and round-the-clock local customer support for its Australian users.

 

Coinbase’s journey in the Australian crypto sector has also been relatively smooth from a regulatory perspective, as it has not faced any major legal or regulatory challenges from Australian regulators, despite the country’s strict crypto enforcement actions and penalties imposed on compliance violators.

 

 

Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has launched AgentPay, an interoperability tool designed to enable communication between AI payment systems.

 

AgentPay was introduced with the goal of addressing the fragmentation that exists among AI payment agents. By unifying different payment agents regardless of the payment protocols they use, AgentPay enables agents, including those from major payment companies such as Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, and Circle, to work together and communicate with one another.

 

The Fragmentation Problem 

There has been a shift in recent times in the way AI agents are used, with AI agents evolving from being chat assistants like ChatGPT into autonomous economic actors.

 

These AI agents do not only assist or provide feedback. They are able to independently discover services, compare options, negotiate, and execute payments without human intervention. This development has been described by some as the agentic commerce era.

 

With major technology and finance institutions such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Circle actively developing and deploying AI agents capable of conducting real transactions, the adoption of AI in commercial activity has accelerated over the past year. Because these agents often rely on different payment protocols, communication between AI payment agents and systems can be complex. 

 

This fragmentation, if left unresolved, could hinder the growth of businesses integrating AI into their platforms. Analysts project that up to 90 percent of business-to-business purchases could be facilitated by AI agents by 2028, making compatibility with AI agents increasingly important for businesses, regardless of the underlying protocol used by the agent.

 

If an AI agent is not compatible with a business’s application programming interface (API) or service, it may simply move on to another platform that is compatible. In this environment, the most compatible platform may gain a significant advantage. This challenge is what Alchemy’s AgentPay aims to address. 

 

Image credit: Alchemy

 

Instead of requiring businesses to build separate integrations for every protocol used by AI agents, businesses can register their existing application programming interface endpoints with Alchemy. After that, AgentPay generates a proxied endpoint, which is a single, uniform URL that AI agents can use to make payments regardless of the protocol they use, including x402, MPP, A2P, or L402.

 

 

 

Circle is pushing even further into the global payments infrastructure. On April 8, the company officially launched CPN Managed Payments, a fully managed stablecoin settlement product built on top of its Circle Payments Network that lets banks, fintechs, and payment processors tap into USDC rails without ever touching digital assets themselves. Yes, you heard that correctly, they never even have to touch USDC.

 

The solution handles everything on the backend, including USDC minting and burning, payment orchestration, compliance controls, and blockchain infrastructure, so that partner institutions can operate entirely in fiat. In other words, a payment provider signs up, connects once, and Circle does the rest.

 

That is a huge shift in how stablecoin adoption typically works. Until now, most institutions eyeing blockchain-based settlement had to deal with the full stack: custody arrangements, internal compliance buildout, licensing questions, and the operational headaches that come with managing digital assets on a balance sheet. CPN Managed Payments is designed to help institutions overcome those barriers, including digital asset custody, licensing requirements, compliance complexity, and operational risk.

 

"With CPN Managed Payments, we're simplifying how institutions adopt and scale stablecoin payments," said Nikhil Chandhok, Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer. "By combining issuance, liquidity, compliance, and programmable infrastructure into a unified solution, we are enabling financial institutions to embed stablecoin settlement into their existing payment stacks with enterprise-grade reliability and operational readiness."

 

The launch is an extension of CPN, which Circle first announced in April 2025 and brought live the following month. CPN was designed to connect banks, neo-banks, payment service providers, virtual asset service providers, and digital wallets to enable real-time settlement of cross-border payments using regulated stablecoins. Cross-border payments can still take longer than one business day to settle and cost more than 6%, according to the World Bank, disproportionately impacting emerging markets.

 

The underlying mechanics are worth understanding. On the sending side, an originating financial institution handles customer onboarding, KYC, and fiat-to-USDC conversion. On the receiving side, a beneficiary institution receives USDC and converts it to local currency for payout. Circle sits in the middle as network operator but is not holding or moving the funds itself, acting instead as a coordination layer between member institutions. With the managed payments product, Circle now absorbs even more of that operational complexity on behalf of its partners.

 

USDC's market cap currently sits at around $74.8 billion, and Circle reported Q4 2025 revenue of $770 million, 77% better than the same period the prior year. The company has been aggressively expanding its licensing footprint globally and is now leaning into that compliance infrastructure as a competitive moat rather than just a cost center. Circle said that USDC has supported over $70 trillion in "cumulative onchain settlement," with nearly $12 trillion of that amount coming in Q4 2025 alone.

 

CPN Managed Payments is built on Circle's existing infrastructure, which covers payouts across more than 20 blockchains and domestic payment rails, with connectivity to CPN fiat payout corridors worldwide. The platform is also composable, meaning institutions can start fully managed and gradually take on more of the stack themselves as their internal capabilities develop.

 

Launch partners include Veem, along with other global payment service providers. Earlier CPN adopters included Alfred Pay, which is using the network to enable stablecoin-to-fiat offramps via PIX and SPEI; Tazapay, supporting compliant fiat disbursements into Hong Kong; and RedotPay, initiating USDC-based payments into Brazil.

 

The competitive picture is getting crowded. PayPal has had its own stablecoin product on the market for over a year, and Ripple's RLUSD has been gaining ground in cross-border settlement use cases, particularly in corridors where USDC's footprint has been slower to develop. But Circle's bet with CPN Managed Payments is distinct: rather than compete stablecoin-to-stablecoin, it is trying to become the rails that other institutions use, regardless of which digital dollar eventually wins.

 

Circle is currently focusing on serving organizations transacting in high-value, underserved global trade corridors, with plans to explore expansion into Nigeria, the EU, UK, Colombia, India, the UAE, China, Turkey, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Argentina.

 

For traditional finance players who have wanted stablecoin efficiency without the crypto balance sheet exposure, the product is about as clean an entry point as the market has offered. 

 

Apple has removed Bitchat, a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app, from its App Store in China for allegedly violating the country’s internet service regulations.

 

In a Sunday post on X, Jack Dorsey, former CEO and co-founder of Twitter, now known as X, shared a screenshot he received from Apple’s review team in February informing him about the removal of his Bitchat app from the China App Store.

 

 

The removal of the app follows a request from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the main government agency in China responsible for controlling and regulating the internet. The Cyberspace Administration of China alleges that Bitchat violates Article 3 of the Provisions on the Security Assessment of Internet-based Information Services, one of the agency’s key internet compliance rules.

 

Since its launch in July 2025, the Bitchat app has grown increasingly popular, especially in regions affected by unrest. Madagascar, Nepal, and Uganda have each recorded several tens of thousands of downloads when the governments of these countries shut down internet service during times of civil crisis. Google Play Store has also recorded over one million downloads, with a user rating above four out of five.

 

China considers blockchain-based lending for traditional finance

Despite the ban on Bitchat and China’s strict rules on digital assets and crypto-related activities, the country continues to push forward with blockchain-based innovation and development.

 

Recently, two of China’s core tax and financial regulators, the State Taxation Administration and the National Financial Regulatory Administration, have urged banks and other financial institutions to incorporate blockchain technology into their lending and credit services. The agencies reiterated the benefits of blockchain in standardizing data and improving transparency among tax authorities, banks, and enterprises.

 

This recommendation aligns with the National Development and Reform Commission’s goal of integrating blockchain into key national infrastructure. In January 2025, the commission, one of China’s top economic planning bodies, released a blockchain-powered data infrastructure roadmap. The plan aims to leverage blockchain technology to build a national digital data infrastructure that could attract about 400 billion yuan, or 58 billion dollars, in investments each year.

 

The commission is currently in the first phase of the roadmap, which focuses on developing core blockchain infrastructure and establishing standardized protocols. The next stages will involve integrating and scaling these blockchain protocols across different sectors of the country’s infrastructure.

 

 

OpenFX, a fintech infrastructure startup founded by Prabhakar Reddy, co-founder of crypto brokerage company FalconX, has raised $94 million to expand its stablecoin-based cross-border foreign exchange (FX) payment rails.

 

The Series A round, which took place in March, was led by Accel and Atomico, with other investors including Lightspeed Faction, M13, Northzone, and Pantera participating.

 

 

The $94 million raised is aimed at expanding OpenFX’s presence in Latin America. Despite the region being a challenging market to enter, OpenFX reported strong success during a test deployment in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

 

“Within six weeks, LATAM became our highest-volume region. We had succeeded at scale where so many other players were still struggling with proof of concepts,” the company said.

 

The team attributes its success in the region to its ability to deliver liquidity globally, quickly, and reliably, as well as its deep understanding of what payment service providers (PSPs) and remittance providers require.

 

OpenFX also plans to expand into Southeast Asia. Despite the region having some of the world’s more developed payment systems, cross-border payments remain slow and fragmented. By building a deep liquidity infrastructure, OpenFX aims to address this issue and has said it will be launching in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

 

With these expansion plans underway, OpenFX will extend its presence beyond the United States, United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and India, where it currently operates.

 

The Team’s Progress So Far

Since its launch in 2024, the OpenFx cross-border infrastructure has processed billions of dollars, with an annualized processing volume of $45 billion.

 

In its first month of operation, the team says it processed $500,000. Eight weeks later, that figure had grown to $500,000 per week. Three months after launch, it was processing $500,000 per day, and today it processes approximately $500,000 per minute, with 98% of transactions settling in under 60 minutes.

 

The team also says it has onboarded more than 100 global institutional clients to its platform, including fintechs, neobanks, remittance platforms, and payroll processors.

 

OpenFx has now raised a total of $117 million, including $23 million in 2025 in a funding round led by Accel.

 

 

Blockchain data analytics company Chainalysis announced on Tuesday at its annual Links conference in New York the introduction of its blockchain intelligence agents, designed to scale investigations and compliance for security professionals and organizations.

 

According to the company’s CEO and co-founder, Jonathan Levine, the AI agents are not a “new product” or a “bolted-on chatbot feature,” but rather an evolution of the company’s existing platform and experience, built on insights from billions of transactions screened and more than ten million investigations conducted over the past decade.

 

"Chainalysis blockchain intelligence agents put the full depth of our platform, our data, products, and institutional expertise, into the hands of anyone in your organization,” Levine wrote in a company blog post. “From seasoned investigators and compliance analysts to executives, Chainalysis agents provide insights and amplify what your team can do.”

 

 

To ensure transparency and reliability in its use, the Chainalysis team built its blockchain intelligence agents around four key principles: data quality, context and reasoning, auditable results, deterministic workflows, and human control. These principles are designed to help the agents deliver accurate and consistent insights.

 

The blockchain intelligence agents will begin rolling out over the summer, and the team expects that, over time, they will be used by professionals across a range of roles to unlock new levels of blockchain insight.

 

Chainalysis Joins the AI Agents Race

Prior to Chainalysis's integration of AI agents into its blockchain intelligence platform, several blockchain companies had already developed and launched their own AI-powered tools.

 

On March 25, blockchain intelligence firm and Chainalysis competitor TRM Labs announced the launch of its Co-Case Agent, an embedded AI investigative assistant that enables investigators to use plain-language prompts for complex on-chain tasks such as tracing funds, auditing transaction graphs, and maintaining immutable audit logs for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).

 

Blockchain analytics and crypto intelligence platform Nansen also launched its Nansen AI agent earlier this year. The conversational assistant supports on-chain research and agentic trading, helping users analyze wallets, identify market signals, and suggest trades.

 

These AI agent releases followed the introduction of Elliptic’s Copilot. In April 2025, the blockchain analytics and crypto compliance firm launched its AI-powered assistant to streamline compliance workflows and risk management.

 

Elliptic’s Copilot is widely regarded as one of the earlier AI assistant tools introduced by a blockchain intelligence company.