US dollar to face growing competition for stablecoin dominance: Tether co-founder

While United States dollar-denominated stablecoins dominate the stablecoin and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization game, other competitors are coming into play, according to Tether co-founder Reeve Collins. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph in Dubai, Collins said that while USD-backed stablecoins may currently dominate, other currencies and assets may compete to back stablecoins. He said: 

“The stablecoin definitely helps preserve the dollar dominance, especially in the crypto space. The dollar is kind of the reserve currency of crypto. But now there are other currencies coming into play. But more importantly, it’s not currencies. It’s other types of backing.”

Collins said that these other assets used to back stablecoins may compete with US dollars by bringing a higher yield to users. 

Interview with Tether co-founder Reeve Collins in Dubai, UAE. Source: Cointelegraph Tether co-founder says tokenized assets can back stablecoins

Collins, who works bringing stablecoin yield for users through Pi Protocol, told Cointelegraph that apart from currencies, money-market funds, other commodities

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Ray Dalio says global monetary order ‘on the brink’ of breakdown

Legendary investor Ray Dalio has said the world is “on the brink” of the global monetary order breaking down, which is being accelerated by the Trump administration’s tariff disruptions.

The trade tensions are fracturing the monetary, political and international world orders by fueling deglobalization and unsustainable trade imbalances, Dalio, the former CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said in an April 28 X post.

Dalio added that this is leading to irreversible damage, and an increasing number of importers and exporters, particularly between the US and China, are drastically reducing interdependencies and “making alternative plans.”

“[They’re] recognizing that whatever happens with tariffs, these problems won’t go away, and that radically reduced interdependencies with the US is a reality that has to be planned for.”Source: Ray Dalio

Dalio said America’s role as the world’s largest consumer of manufactured goods and the largest debt issuer is

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Crypto group asks Trump to end prosecution of crypto devs, Roman Storm

The crypto lobby group, the DeFi Education Fund, has petitioned the Trump administration to end what it claimed was the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software developers, including Roman Storm, a creator of the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.

In an April 28 letter to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the group urged President Donald Trump “to take immediate action to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.” 

The letter specifically mentioned the prosecution of Storm, who was charged in August 2023 with helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through Tornado Cash. His trial is still set for July, and his fellow charged co-founder, Roman Semenov, is at large and believed to be in Russia.

The DeFi Education Fund said that in Storm’s case, the Department

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Mastercard links with Circle, Paxos for merchant stablecoin payments

Mastercard says it will allow merchants across its network to be paid with stablecoins in a partnership with payment processor Nuvei and stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos. 

Through the venture, 150 million merchants across the Mastercard network will now have the option to receive payments in stablecoins, regardless of how a customer pays, Mastercard said on April 28.

The payments giant also partnered with crypto exchange OKX for a crypto-enabled bank card, which Mastercard product chief Jorn Lambert said creates a “360-degree approach” where consumers can spend stablecoins and merchants can receive them.

He added that the “mainstream use cases are clear” for blockchain tech, and the company wanted “to make it as easy for merchants to receive stablecoin payments and for consumers to use them.”

Source: Mastercard News

The stablecoin market has continued to make gains, crossing a market

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Ethereum Foundation shuffles leadership, splits board and management

The Ethereum Foundation, which backs the development of the Ethereum blockchain, has overhauled its leadership structure to separate the responsibilities of its management team and board of directors.

The board will act as the “security council to protect the heart and soul” of the foundation and set visions for Ethereum, while the new management will be focused on the strategic and operational execution of those visions, the Foundation said in an April 28 blog post.

It added in an April 28 X post that Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak were appointed as co-executive directors on March 2 to deliver on those visions — which are centered around championing censorship resistance, open-source innovation, privacy and security

Wang and Stańczak’s roles took effect on April 28 with the foundation setting a two-year term for Stańczak to address some of

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MetaMask to launch self-custody crypto card with Mastercard

Wallet provider MetaMask is launching a crypto payments card that will allow users to spend self-custodied funds, offering crypto holders additional ways to use their tokens.

The new card is backed by Mastercard and is being developed in partnership with CompoSecure and Baanx, according to the company. The product uses smart contracts to execute the IRL (In Real Life) transactions, with a processing speed under five seconds. It operates on the Linea network, a layer-2 scaling solution on Ethereum.

The companies marketed the self-custodied crypto card as an alternative to the potential risks associated with centralized exchanges. In February, the second-largest crypto exchange by volume, Bybit, was hacked for $1.4 billion, an event that sparked widespread consternation in the crypto space.

With the launch of its card, MetaMask is entering a competitive segment of the cryptocurrency market. Major exchanges like

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Tether still dominates stablecoins despite competition — Nansen

Despite growing competition from emerging issuers, the stablecoin market remains largely dominated by a few key players. According to data from Web3 research firm Nansen, Tether’s USDt continues to lead among US dollar-pegged stablecoins, even as competition intensifies.

As of April 25, Tether (USDT) has a roughly 66% market share among stablecoins, compared to around 28% for USDC (USDC), Nansen said in the April 25 report. Ethena’s USDe stablecoin ranks a distant third, touting a market share of just over 2%.

Nansen expects Tether’s lead to endure even as rivals such as USDC clock faster growth rates.

“With nearly 3x as many users as Uniswap and 50+% more transactions than the next app, Tether is by and far the largest use case of onchain activity,” Nansen said.

“Despite the potential dispersion in stables, we inevitably believe this is a ‘winner-takes-most’ market dynamic,” the

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Arizona legislature moves forward with Bitcoin reserve bills

Lawmakers in the Arizona House of Representatives have voted to pass two bills that could allow the state to adopt a reserve using Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies.

In a third reading on April 28 of the Senate Bill 1025 (SB1025), a proposal to amend Arizona’s statutes to allow for a strategic BTC reserve, 31 members of the Arizona House voted in favor of the bill, with 25 opposed. A similar bill, SB1373, to establish a state-level digital assets reserve, passed with 37 lawmakers in favor and 19 voting nay.

“This bill basically takes the approach that probably 15 other states are considering the same legislation nationwide that allows the treasurer to invest up to 10% into, probably mainly Bitcoin but other things as well,” said State Representative Jeff Weninger on SB1025. “I think this probably would start as a ‘may’ for

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Bitcoin price consolidation likely as US Core PCE, manufacturing, and jobs reports print this week

Key takeaways: 

A week full of US macroeconomic reports could impact Bitcoin traders’ sentiment. 

Bitcoin’s rally could stall if there’s a sharp reduction in spot buy volumes.

If PCE, the ISM PMI, and jobs data align with market expectations, BTC could rally. 

Bitcoin (BTC) price could face a period of range-bound trading after managing a 10.37% rally over the past 7 days. Robust spot purchasing demand from Strategy, the spot BTC ETFs, and announcements from 21Shares and Coinbase played a role in Bitcoin’s rally to $95,700. With the exception of the April 28 announcement of a $1.42 billion BTC purchase from Strategy, a quiet week on the crypto news front could translate to a reduction in spot demand and lower support tests from Bitcoin price. 

This week is also event-filled on the macroeconomic data reporting side. On April 29, the

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Gold-backed cryptocurrencies spike amid global trade uncertainty

Gold-backed cryptocurrencies have spiked in value amid the global trade war unleashed by US President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariffs.

Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) reached all-time highs on April 22, with Tether Gold touching $3,529 and Paxos Gold recording a peak of $3,520, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Two other gold-backed cryptocurrencies — Quorium (QGOLD) and Kinesis Gold (KAU) — have seen rises of 8.5% and 7.6%, respectively, in the past 30 days. All four tokens are up 40% or more in the past 12 months, CoinGecko data shows.

Related: Tether clocks $13B in 2024 profits, US bond holdings hit all-time highs

According to a report by Tether, the increased demand for XAUT

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