Stablecoin ‘Turf War’ ⚔️
Plus: Robinhood RWAs
In this week’s edition of The Context, we look into Visa’s and Mastercard’s plans to weather stablecoins’ surge, why Robinhood is tokenizing popular stocks, and the sudden death of a South Korean CBDC.
[Crypto under the (Robin)hood 🏹]
On Monday, Robinhood announced that European Union users can trade tokenized (i.e., onchain) stocks and exchange-traded funds. The company will use the Arbitrum network while developing its own blockchain.
What Media Said 🧑💻:
U.S. exchanges Kraken and Gemini are already doing this, noted WSJ. Consumers outside the U.S. now have an easier way to buy and sell stocks from major U.S. companies like Apple and Tesla. (And, per Robinhood’s plans, from private firms like OpenAI and SpaceX.)
For companies, putting equities, funds, and real estate onchain means “cheaper, faster and more efficient settlements and around-the-clock trading,” explained Krisztian Sandor (CoinDesk). One industry estimate says tokenized assets will be worth $18.9 trillion by 2033.
“Robinhood’s latest move is its most serious push yet to blend traditional finance with blockchain-based infrastructure,” wrote MacKenzie Sigalos (CNBC). Even so, the crypto element is designed to be no more visible to consumers than their house’s plumbing.
PR Perspective 🔎:
Robinhood got play with this on all fronts. The announcement was connected to Eth CC (Ethereum Community Conference), ensuring trade publications would be all over it. And Robinhood’s name recognition meant every newspaper’s business section would carry it. Finally, the company used crypto chief Johann Kerbrat's rags-to-riches journey— from flipping burgers in a cramped Cannes apartment to launching crypto innovations from a luxury hotel—to humanize what could have been dry financial news.
[CBDC o no? ❌]
The South Korean central bank is reportedly pausing a pilot of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
What Media Said 🧑💻:
President Lee Jae Myung came into office on a crypto platform. This move “signal[s] diminishing enthusiasm for state-led digital currencies as [his] drive to promote a broader private-sector role for stablecoins gains momentum,” wrote Soo-Hyang Choi (Bloomberg).
Banks weren’t happy with the CBDC trial, reported Jesse Coghlan (Cointelegraph). What they want is to issue their own stablecoins. Last week, eight South Korean banks began collaborating on a won-backed stable.
PR Perspective 🔎:
If you’re a crypto company, you should be weighing in on how stablecoins make financial infrastructure more open, programmable, and interoperable. But don’t give a broad platitude! Start thinking of specific examples of openness and interoperability (that relate to your project) and how they improve people’s lives.
[Stable COunterINsurgency 💳]
“A turf war is breaking out in the vast world of digital payments,” wrote Emily Mason & Olga Kharif (Bloomberg), “and the incumbents are suddenly on defense.”
What Bloomberg Said 🧑💻:
To position themselves to take advantage of the stablecoin surge, Visa and Mastercard are integrating stablecoin settlement and crypto cards while rebranding themselves “as the backbone for all kinds of digital transactions”—not just middlemen extracting a fee.
However, they “have a long history of neutralizing competitive threats by absorbing them into their own networks, often in ways designed to preserve their pricing power.” Will stablecoins—already worth $253 billion—be the same? Visa and Mastercard do have tools customers love but stablecoins don’t provide—fraud protection, rewards, and FDIC insurance, to name a few.
PR Perspective 🔎:
There’s no news peg for this story; it’s just an analysis of where things are headed, part of a second wave of articles meant to explain stablecoin adoption and the shifting payments landscape to lay audiences. Remember: Crypto coverage of trends typically ripples outward from trade publications to the mainstream, where readers are often less steeped in the terminology and themes. In other words, you still have to explain to audiences why your news is a big deal.
[Tweet of The Week]
Credit - @Stanunlocked
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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.