• Unchained Daily
  • Posts
  • Circle Acquires Interop Labs Team but Leaves Axelar Token Behind

Circle Acquires Interop Labs Team but Leaves Axelar Token Behind

Plus: 🦊 MetaMask adds native Bitcoin support, 💵 PayPal launches PYUSD savings vault, 🏦 JPMorgan debuts tokenized money market fund.

Author

Juan Aranovich
December 16, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🟠 Circle acquires Interop Labs but excludes Axelar Foundation and AXL

  • 🦊 MetaMask adds native Bitcoin support to its wallet

  • 💵 PayPal launches a PYUSD savings vault on Spark

  • 🏦 JPMorgan rolls out a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Walrus!

Decentralized data is the future — that’s why Unchained stores its media library on Walrus.

With lightning-fast performance, unparalleled reliability, and granular access controls, your data is secure and dependable, no matter what.

By Tikta

Circle Acquires Interop Labs Team, Excludes Axelar Foundation and Token

Stablecoin issuer Circle has agreed to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property, key early contributors to the Axelar Network.

Circle announced the acquisition on Monday as part of its strategy to expand cross chain capabilities, but noted that Axelar Network, Foundation and AXL token would “continue to operate independently under community governance.”

Those exclusions drew backlash from some members of the community, with several industry watchers arguing that the deal benefits equity holders at the expense of AXL token holders.

“Sure it’s legal for circle to acquire axelar, a team which has vested and sold tons of AXL over the years, with token holders getting zero upside or benefit. But it’s still ultimate scumbag behavior,” said one user on X. 

AXL dropped 12% after news of the Circle deal, now trading around 88% below its all-time high. 

“Another acquisition, another rug. Circle acquiring Axelar while explicitly excluding the foundation and the AXL token is outright criminal. If not legally, then morally,” said Simon Dedic, managing partner at Moonrock Capital.

Unchained On Air: Double Header Today with DEX in the City & Laura Shin!

At 12pm ET, DEX in the City hosts Jessi Brooks and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos are joined by special guest Jill Gunter of Espresso Systems to discuss all things privacy plus Do Kwon’s sentencing.

Then, Laura sits down with Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat at 1pm ET to dive into Robinhood’s 2025: from expanding stock tokens to every country in the EU and EEA, to new features for traders like staking, it's been a huge year for Robinhood.

📺️ Don’t miss it—catch it on YouTube, X, PumpFun, or Twitch

MetaMask Adds Native Bitcoin Support

MetaMask has officially added native Bitcoin support to its consumer wallet, letting users buy, send, receive, and swap BTC as part of the platform’s broader multichain push outside the Ethereum ecosystem.

The latest update automatically creates a Bitcoin address inside users’ multichain accounts once they upgrade, so BTC sits in the same unified view as Ethereum, Solana, Monad, and Sei assets.

The wallet currently supports native SegWit addresses and derivation, which reduces fees and is compatible with most exchanges, with Taproot address support flagged as “coming soon.”

However, MetaMask warned the Bitcoin transactions would be typically slower than EVM or Solana networks.

PayPal Launches PYUSD Savings Vault on Spark

Payments giant PayPal has launched the PYUSD Savings Vault on DeFi lending platform Spark protocol to boost adoption of its dollar-pegged stablecoin.

The vault integrates PYUSD directly with SparkLend, with supply and borrowing backed by Spark's $8 billion stablecoin reserves.

According to the documentation, 90% of deposits are routed through the Spark Liquidity Layer into yield-generating strategies, while the remaining 10% remains in the contract to provide liquidity for instant withdrawals.

Interest is earned in the form of spPYUSD, an accrual token issued to depositors, with yields anchored to the Sky Savings Rate of around 4.25% APY.

Around $146 million PYUSD has been supplied to the vault so far, earning around 2.11% APY, with $67 million PYUSD borrowed against a 5.25% APY.

The news comes as PayPal applied for approval to form “PayPal Bank” and extend loans to small U.S. businesses. 

JPMorgan Launches Tokenized Money Market Fund on Ethereum

Wall Street banking giant JPMorgan Chase launched its first tokenized money market fund, named My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), on the Ethereum blockchain.

Initially seeded with $100 million of the bank's own capital, MONY invests exclusively in U.S. Treasuries and fully collateralized Treasury repos, providing daily dividend reinvestment and U.S. dollar yield.

Qualified investors, with at least $1 million in capital, can access it via the Morgan Money platform using cash or stablecoins like USDC, receiving tokens directly in their wallets.

The launch comes as the market for tokenized real world assets surpassed $30 billion this year, with Ethereum accounting for the majority of volume.

Decentralized data is the future — that’s why Unchained stores its media library on Walrus. With lightning-fast performance, unparalleled reliability, and granular access controls, your data is secure and dependable, no matter what.

  • 🇰🇷 Do Kwon may still stand trial in South Korea despite receiving a 15-year U.S. sentence, as prosecutors there pursued separate charges tied to capital markets violations affecting around 200,000 victims and $204 million in losses.

  • 🏛️ Kevin Hassett, head of the U.S. National Economic Council, reportedly lost support as a potential Federal Reserve chair pick after senior figures raised concerns about his closeness to President Trump and risks to perceived central bank independence.

  • 🧾 The U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council said in its 2025 report that crypto and stablecoins no longer posed an immediate systemic threat, crediting new federal rules for improving oversight and noting most blockchain activity was legitimate.

  • 🛡️ Solana said it endured one of the largest denial-of-service attack waves ever recorded but reported that transactions and onchain activity continued running smoothly without disruption.

  • 🎯 PancakeSwap will help incubate Probable, a prediction-market platform on BNB Chain that lets users bet on events ranging from sports to politics using automated USDT conversions and blockchain-based price feeds.

  • 💧 Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin will expand next year to Ethereum layer 2 networks  using the Wormhole bridge, aiming to boost everyday payments and DeFi use as the company leaned into a multichain strategy following recent regulatory approval as a national trust.

  • 🏦 Russian bank Sberbank began testing decentralized finance products as crypto demand surged among clients, with executives highlighting interest in tokenized assets and public blockchains like Ethereum for their mature technology.

  • 📈 Anchorage Digital acquired Securitize For Advisors to grow its wealth-management offering, bringing a fast-growing advisory platform into the first federally chartered crypto bank as looser U.S. rules accelerated institutional and retirement-focused crypto adoption.

  • 🟠 Strategy bought 10,645 bitcoin for about $980 million, lifting its total holdings to 671,268 BTC worth over $50 billion and reporting a 24.9% year-to-date bitcoin yield in 2025.

  • ⛏️ BitMine’s ether stash grew to roughly 3.97 million ETH—more than 3.2% of all ether—pushing its combined crypto, cash and investment holdings to about $13.3 billion.

Ready for Merge is a podcast for investors, builders, and operators who want to stay informed on Ethereum and Bitcoin protocol development. Hosted by Christine D. Kim, former host of Infinite Jungle and Mapping Out Eth.2.0, each episode breaks down core developer debates, protocol upgrades, and governance tradeoffs—without hype.

Listen now on: