Is Amazon Going Crypto? 🛒
Plus: Trump-linked Tron goes public
In this week’s edition of The Context, we identify which companies are developing stablecoins, reveal how much crypto Donald Trump owns, and explain how Tron is going public.
[A Stable Income for Companies? 💸]
As a regulatory framework for stablecoins inches toward passage, the public is getting more specifics about which big companies and banks are considering launching their own coins.
What Media Said 🧑💻:
Walmart and Amazon are eyeing stables, reported WSJ in an exclusive. If either of these mega-companies moves to bypass traditional payment infrastructure by using crypto, it “would send shivers through the nation’s banks and card-network giants.” The appeal for the companies is simple: save billions in transaction fees every year, such as the interchange fee they pay every time a customer uses a credit card.
We might want to add JPMorgan to this list, suggested Brayden Lindrea (CoinTelegraph). Even though CEO Jamie Dimon is historically a Bitcoin bear, the company is trying to trademark JPMD for a “wide range of crypto-related services.” JPMorgan dollar, anyone?
It’s not only big companies looking to get in—big investors are backing stable startups. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and other VCs just gave $10M to Ubyx, which “is building a clearing system for connecting stablecoin issuers with banks and fintechs, aiming to reduce friction for users seeking to use the crypto tokens for payments,” reported Anna Irrera (Bloomberg).
PR Perspective 🔎:
In a perfect storm of regulatory clarity and corporate ambition, America's financial landscape is witnessing its biggest disruption since the advent of credit cards. Traditional payment processors like Visa and Mastercard are watching their stock prices stumble as corporate America eyes the transformative potential of instant, borderless, fee-free commerce.
[Build That Wall-et? 👛]
The White House released a financial disclosure report identifying President Trump’s business interests and detailing his wealth. It reveals he may hold $1 billion in crypto.
What Media Said 🧑💻:
Key to Trump’s crypto empire is decentralized finance project World Liberty Financial. “Trump has earned over $57 million from token sales on the platform and holds nearly 16 billion of the governance tokens—the crypto version of voting shares—launched by World Liberty,” explained Leo Schwartz (Fortune). Based on what those tokens sold to accredited investors for, “Trump’s holdings could be worth nearly $1 billion.”
The $57M makes crypto his “second-most lucrative source of income” behind hospitality, noted Sander Lutz (Decrypt). Thanks to “realized and unrealized gains from various crypto projects,” including a memecoin, crypto should become his biggest revenue stream in 2025.
PR Perspective 🔎:
While the headlines raise red flags about conflicts of interest (especially with Congress debating blockchain regulation), they also signal that crypto is no longer fringe; it’s financially and politically relevant at the highest level. For the industry, it’s a messy but powerful proof point of crypto’s growing influence.
[Public Tron-sport? 🚲]
Justin Sun’s Tron Group, which is behind the TRON blockchain, will go public via a reverse merger with toymaker SRM Entertainment. (A reverse merger allows a private company to begin publicly trading by buying a public company.)
What Media Said 🧑💻:
This sets SRM up to be a TRON version of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, a company that predominantly holds Bitcoin in its treasury, noted FT. There’s more: Eric Trump is likely to have a role in the new company, and the transaction was engineered by Dominari Securities, which is based in Trump Tower and has Eric and Donald Trump Jr on its advisory board.
Sun, who the SEC accused of market manipulation in 2023, has been building ties to the Trump family since the election, said WSJ, investing in their World Liberty Financial crypto project and buying $20M worth of Donald Trump’s memecoin. That earned him face time with the President at his memecoin gala, which Democrats and others criticized “as a brazen act of self-enrichment, allowing big crypto investors to buy access to the president.”
PR Perspective 🔎:
Sun is a controversial figure even for crypto, and he’s rarely shy about using his wealth to buy what he wants. His moves to ingratiate himself with the Trump family have garnered media attention, but will they improve TRON’s standing with consumers? The blockchain’s TRX ranks 8th by crypto market cap, less than 10% the size of competitor Ethereum.
[Tweet of The Week]
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The usual disclaimer: This newsletter collates the main themes and headlines of the week in DeFi/crypto/metaverse/Web3/NFT land and tries to provide unbiased context. It's aimed at anyone who wants to keep an eye on the space. It's put together by a team at YAP and doesn't contain any promotion of our clients (if one is mentioned, we'll flag that).
The team: Founder Samantha Yap and consulting editor Jeff Benson, Andrew Wickerson, Nathalie Larrea, Meghna Dembla, Samvidha Sharma, William Knight, Taylor Handler, Trisha Goswami and Shajar Qureshi. Your feedback is, as always, welcome. Ping us at thecontext@yapglobal.com. Old newsletters can be found here.
This newsletter is prepared by YAP Global, an international PR Consultancy focusing on helping cryptocurrency, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and brands through impactful storytelling. Find out more about us here.