Mastercard expands partnership with Circle to roll out USDC and EURC stablecoins
Mastercard is strengthening its collaboration with Circle by now facilitating payments in USDC and EURC stablecoins in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The goal is to enable acquirers (banks, fintechs, terminal providers) to process payments directly in stablecoins. For Circle, this is a key step in its strategy: USDC aims to become as common as traditional payments. The stablecoin has already seen its capitalization jump to $69.3bn, up 58% since the beginning of 2025. Two pilot fintechs, Arab Financial Services and Eazy Financial Services, will be the first to benefit from this integration. For Mastercard, this partnership marks a transition to programmable currency, focusing on established players rather than new tokens. Circle (CRCL) shares, despite a high of $299, are currently trading at $127.4, valuing the company at $29.48bn.
American Bitcoin (ABTC): the Trump clan’s crypto company soon to be listed on the stockmarket
The mining company American Bitcoin, linked to the Trump family, plans to make its stockmarket debut in September. To do so, it will merge with Gryphon Digital Mining, a move that will allow the combined entity to be listed under the ticker symbol ABTC. The goal is to offer a “made in the USA” bitcoin with easier access to public capital — without going through a traditional IPO. According to the CEO of Hut 8, American Bitcoin’s main shareholder, this strategy allows the company to directly benefit from already available financing. And the Trump family members have no intention of playing a supporting role: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Hut 8 will own 98% of the company once the transaction is finalized. With $220m already raised and ambitions to dominate mining on American soil, American Bitcoin adds a new piece to the Trump clan’s crypto offensive.
Google unveils its own blockchain: “Universal Ledger” enters private testnet
American giant Google is accelerating its Web3 efforts: its head of blockchain strategy, Rich Widmann, confirmed this week the development of an in-house blockchain called Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL). The project aims to create a neutral, high-performance infrastructure tailored to financial institutions, with a smart contract language based on Python, rather than EVM like Ethereum. The goal: to attract the giants of finance. The CME Group, the world’s largest commodities exchange, is already collaborating with Google to explore the tokenization of assets on GCUL.
BitMine, the new MicroStrategy of Ethereum?
Since the end of June, BitMine Immersion Technologies’ share price has jumped +886%, driven by a radical strategy: massively accumulating ether (ETH). Gone are the days of bitcoin mining; the company wants to become the first “Ethereum Treasury Company” and aims to own 5% of the total ETH supply — or 6 million tokens. At the helm is Wall Street figure Tom Lee, who is transforming BitMine into an ether vault. The company has already accumulated 1.9 million ETH, for a passive return via staking estimated at over 2% per year, which can be reinvested without immediate dilution. To go further: After MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin bet, here is BitMine’s Ethereum bet
For decades, the Trumps’ crown jewel asset was real estate. As of Monday, WLFI could be worth more than some of their historic portfolios. How does it work? A crypto listing similar to an IPO: the WLFI token, previously sold privately, is now freely traded on exchanges. The result: a market valuation that gives a “real” price to the tokens held by the founders.
The family — the president and his three sons — owns just under a quarter of the total WLFI supply. At the time of writing, the WLFI cryptocurrency has a valuation of $4.6 billion, representing a windfall of over $1bn for the Trump family.
Officially, these founder tokens are locked (no sales allowed). But the listing immediately transforms these shares into accounting wealth. At the time of listing, WLFI was trading at around $0.33. Very quickly, excitement took hold on the platforms: on Binance, the price briefly touched $0.50 before plunging below $0.24 the next day (today). That’s a 14% drop in 24 hours, with extreme volatility spikes: +100% in a few hours, followed by a halving. This is a classic post-launch “pump and dump” scenario, fueled by rapid sales from investors eager to take their profits.
Behind this turmoil lies a well-oiled mechanism: of the 24.6 billion WLFI in circulation, around 4 billion had been released for public sale at launch, representing 20% of the total supply. This was enough to create immediate selling pressure.
Flash governance: the idea of a buyback
As soon as the first tokens were distributed, a governance debate arose on the World Liberty Financial forum: should the protocol’s liquidity fees (Ethereum, BSC, Solana) be used to buy back WLFI on the market before burning them? The aim was to reduce the supply in circulation and artificially support the price.
Such a maneuver, so early on, is surprising. In general, this type of mechanism comes into play after months or years of existence, when the user base is solid. Often, crypto issuers implement buybacks to show their strength and boost investor confidence. They use these buybacks to reduce the circulating supply, stabilize the price, and reward their community. This is a credible strategy when demand is already well established and growth is organic. Used too early, however, it can betray underlying weakness.
Here, the eagerness betrays a structural fragility: WLFI has not yet found its equilibrium price, and real demand remains very limited. In addition, future token releases may negate the effect of these buybacks.
“MAGA, this time with crypto”
World Liberty was launched with the promise of “Make America Great Again, this time with crypto.” Since then, the presidency has pushed a pro-cryptosphere narrative, vowing to take a light-handed approach to regulation and touting the virtues of crypto for boosting the U.S. economy.
WLFI is just one stage of the rocket. Entities linked to Trump control about 80% of $TRUMP, a memecoin valued at several billion dollars. A family trust owns just over half of Trump Media (Truth Social), a publicly traded company that owns and buys cryptocurrencies, worth approximately $2.5bn. All told, the crypto pile easily exceeds the “paper” fortune attributed to WLFI alone.
Jackpot… or mirage?
Early WLFI investors, who bought in at $0.015, can make big gains — even if World Liberty initially only allows them to trade one-fifth of their tokens. But capturing cash in the future will remain tricky: in crypto, low sales can derail the price. Volatility is no academic matter: the $TRUMP memecoin, launched in January, skyrocketed… then plummeted.
Critics point to the risk of influence: partners and investors would have political interests in getting closer to the White House. One example cited is that demand for World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin would be largely driven by Binance, whose convicted former founder is seeking a presidential pardon. The official response: “No conflict of interest,” says the White House spokesperson. For its part, World Liberty insists it is a private, apolitical company — while celebrating the “greatest president of all time.”
Crypto loves these stories of disruption. The markets, on the other hand, have short memories — but formidable calculators.
World Liberty Financial, backed by the Trump family, creates a $1.5 billion crypto treasury (Wired)
What will remain after the AI and cryptocurrency bubbles? (Project Syndicate)
