They all rush Stablecoins, but the numbers look … the same.
In the second quarter, he felt as if he couldn’t spend a day without a great Stablecoin ad. JPMorgan launched its USD deposit token at the base. Coinbase debuted its Stablecoin payments after the Shopify association. Anchorage Digital acquired the USDM emitter mountain protocol. UBYX raised $ 10 million for Stablecoin’s compensation infrastructure. Bitcoin -based plasma filled its deposit limit of $ 1 billion in 30 minutes. All in a few weeks of each other.
But despite all this activity, Stablecoins are still a brutally concentrated market, “winner takes the majority.” Of the approximately $ 250 billion in the circulating stable supply, Tether claims $ 158 billion (2.5x of $ 62 billion circle)While the USDC eclipse the third largest asset, the USDE ($ 5.3 billion)by 11x.
While the stables that support the performance and products of the treasure tokenized such as USDE, SUDS, BUIDL and M0 create new competition vectors, the distribution still wins. The final winner will not be determined by the highest performance of a novel mechanism, but by distribution and utility. The most valuable stable will be the one that is without problems, reliable and accepted everywhere.
I have no doubt that a lot of money will continue to flow towards Stablecoins, since the “dollars in a block chain” have been established as one of the largest markets that will be gained in cryptography. Although the most interesting question for me is how do you help users to make use of their stablecoins once they support them?
Mini Applications: Finally mobile first crypto arrives
For years, Defi’s complexity has been his greatest barrier to adoption. Q2 marked a turning point when the industry recovered around a new access layer: mini applications.
- Wallet (Building in the framework of the Farcaster Marcos) inverted in renewing the wallet coinbase in a mini applications platform.
- The world mini-application ecosystem exploded and caught the construction of the builder.
- Opera launched its independent minipay application for iOS and Android.
The strategy is clear: the power of Defi in family and easy to use interfaces.
Mini-Aplications are finally dragging Defi to the mobile era. Unlike the previous cycles, UX is not a late occurrence: ours is the product. Distribution platforms now aspire to become structures similar to SUPERAPP where developers fight to take advantage of captive users, just like Wechat in China.
By abstracting gas rates, seed phrases and hexadecimal addresses, these applications make accessible chain finances without forcing users to understand the underlying complexity.
Return of sophisticated capital structures (Without luggage)
One of the most interesting developments of Q2 has been the silent return of structured products to Defi.
Protocols as resolved, the Aave and infinifi.xyz umbrella initiative are building products that seem familiar to any traffi professional. By offering characteristics that reflect the sections and the promotion of performance optimization, they provide differentiated risk profiles that can accommodate the specific mandates of institutional investors, from pension funds to corporate (and defi) Treasures
It is a movement beyond simple and high -risk agriculture towards a financial system that can set the price and assign the risk in a sophisticated way. It is the necessary infrastructure to manage capital at scale.
A blur of financial worlds
The distinction between “Crypto” and “Tradfi” dissolves even more.
The Bell Opening Platform of Superstate facilitated the first direct broadcast of public actions registered in the SEC in the chain, and Kraken launched the operations of shares without commissions along with their cryptography offers.
When traditional assets can move in new rails and users can access both systems from a single interface, it no longer makes sense to think of these as “cryptography” or “Fintech” products.
Of course, the two previous examples highlight “actions” that come to cryptography, but the opposite is also true, where almost all the mainly mainch applications have or are adding crypto in some way. The market has gone from experimental to essential.
Looking to the future: a different type of bullish market
The second quarter of 2025 will probably be remembered as the fourth when defi stopped trying to reinvent finance and began to improve it. The stablecoin infrastructure that traditional institutions are building, the first mobile experiences that emerge through miniplapas and sophisticated products developed by mature protocols point to the same conclusion: Defi has found its base.
The acquisition activity tells the story: the strategic agreements such as the departure of PRIVY A STRIPE and the acquisition of Anchorage de Mountain Protocoly continue with the tendency of the cryptographic infrastructure companies that are valued and acquired by larger players.
This is not the speculative mania of the previous cycles. It is more accessible, efficient and global financial services on scale.
Gold Rush’s mentality that characterized Crypto’s first years is giving way to the railroad building. And historically, the companies that build the railroads tend to survive those that only seek gold.
