Meta Just Paid Its First Creator in Crypto

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🔥 Meta began offering select creators in Colombia and the Philippines the option to receive payouts in USDC on Solana or Polygon, with Stripe handling the backend and tax reporting

• 🏦 Tether's XXI merger proposal is a bet that treasury, mining, lending, and payments should all live under one Bitcoin-native public company rather than three separate ones

• 📉 Bitcoin's resilience under a 5% 30-year Treasury yield is being tested, and analysts say the question now isn't whether yields are a headwind, but how long they stay there

• ⚡ Hyperliquid's HIP-4 proposal doesn't just add prediction markets, it offers cross-margin with futures — a structural edge that Polymarket and Kalshi can't replicate today

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Meta Rolls Out USDC Creator Payouts, Four Years After Killing Libra

Meta has started paying select creators in USDC stablecoin, marking the company's most concrete crypto move since it shut down the Diem project in 2022. The feature is currently available to creators in Colombia and the Philippines, who can link a compatible crypto wallet and receive earnings directly on Solana or Polygon. Stripe is handling the backend and will provide crypto-specific tax reporting alongside Meta's standard forms.

Meta is not issuing its own coin. It is not offering an off-ramp, either. Creators who want local currency will need to convert their USDC through a third-party exchange. Compatible wallets include MetaMask, Phantom, and Binance. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said the program is expected to expand to more than 160 countries by year-end.

The timing reflects how much the regulatory environment has changed. The GENIUS Act created a federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, and companies including Shopify, Western Union, and Airbnb have all moved to integrate stablecoin payments in the past year. Meta, with more than 3 billion users, could become one of the largest stablecoin distribution pipelines for individuals anywhere.

Tether Wants to Build One Bitcoin Powerhouse Out of Three Companies

Tether Investments proposed merging Twenty One Capital with Strike and bitcoin miner Elektron Energy on Wednesday, a move that would combine bitcoin treasury, mining, financial services, lending, and capital markets under a single publicly listed company. XXI shares climbed over 8% in after-hours trading on the news. Jack Mallers, CEO of both XXI and Strike, said he backs the plan.

Twenty One Capital went public in December through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, entering the market with 43,514 BTC on its balance sheet and backing from Tether, SoftBank, and Bitfinex. The new proposal would take the company significantly beyond its original treasury mandate. Elektron, led by Raphael Zagury, manages approximately 50 EH/s, or about 5% of the current Bitcoin network's total computing power, with production costs below $60,000 per bitcoin. Tether is proposing Zagury serve as president of the combined entity.

The merger terms and timeline have not been disclosed. Mallers said at the Bitcoin 2026 conference that his founding goal was always to build a full Bitcoin company, not a payments app. Strike separately announced a $2.1 billion credit facility and new proof-of-reserves for its bitcoin-backed lending business at the same event.

Fed Holds Again, Dissenters Complicate the Picture, and the 30-Year Treasury Hits 5%

The Federal Reserve voted 8-4 on Wednesday to hold the federal funds rate at 3.5%-3.75% for a third consecutive meeting, the most divided policy decision in over three decades. Bitcoin fell from around $76,200 to briefly below $75,000 before partially recovering. The Fed's statement flagged elevated inflation tied to surging global energy prices and cited Middle East developments as adding high uncertainty to its outlook.

Stephen Miran voted to cut rates immediately. Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari, and Lorie Logan voted to hold but opposed any language suggesting future easing. That hawkish dissent drove an already elevated 30-year Treasury yield to 5%, its highest level since July 2025. A 30-year bond yielding 5% offers a near risk-free return that competes directly with assets like bitcoin. Analysts said the dynamic is straightforward: as long as yields stay attractive and monetary policy stays tight, capital has a real alternative to risk.

The Fed also noted it expects Jerome Powell's term as chair to end in mid-May. The Senate Banking Committee advanced Kevin Warsh's nomination as the next chair by a 13-11 party-line vote the same day.

Hyperliquid Is Coming for Polymarket — With Zero-Fee Prediction Markets

Hyperliquid, the decentralized exchange that processed $219 billion in trading volume in March alone, is testing a prediction market product that would let traders bet on real-world outcomes directly alongside their crypto futures. The proposal, called HIP-4, is currently on testnet with no confirmed mainnet launch date. It would allow traders to take positions on events, from elections to economic data releases, from the same margin account they use for perpetual contracts.

Under HIP-4, opening a position costs nothing. Fees only apply when closing or settling a trade, a significant contrast to Polymarket's 2% fee on winning bets. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said in a note that the HYPE token gives Hyperliquid an additional advantage: users who hold the native token can benefit economically from platform activity in a way Polymarket and Kalshi currently don't offer.

Important questions remain open, including how Hyperliquid would govern which real-world events qualify for contracts and how oracle disputes would be resolved. The platform also restricts U.S. users, which limits its direct competition with Kalshi on regulated turf. Its overlap with Polymarket is the more immediate fight.

DON’T MISS TODAY’S BITS + BIPS & UNCHAINED STREAM

First, Steve talks to Gensyn.ai. Then Tom Dunleavy of Varys Capital and Adrian Vasiljevic of Steakhouse Financial join Laura to debate whether DeFi yields actually compensate depositors for tail risk — smart-contract exploits, oracle attacks, and composability cascades. 

STREAM STARTS AT 12 PM ET

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🏦 Securitize and Computershare, the world's largest transfer agent, agreed to enable tokenized equity issuance for U.S.-listed companies through so-called Issuer-Sponsored Tokens, opening a path for shares in the $70 trillion U.S. stock market to move onchain. Computershare acts as a transfer agent manages shares for about 58% of S&P 500 companies, including Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla, and will serve as transfer agent for the tokenized holdings, which retain the same rights and economics as traditional shares while allowing onchain borrowing.

• 🏛️ The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 along party lines to advance Kevin Warsh's nomination to lead the Federal Reserve, teeing up a full Senate floor vote expected the week of May 11. The vote clears the path for Warsh to be confirmed before Jerome Powell's term expires on May 15.

• 🏛️ Czech National Bank Governor Aleš Michl made the case for bitcoin as a central bank reserve asset in a keynote at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, citing internal research showing a 1% BTC allocation could boost expected returns without meaningfully raising overall portfolio risk. The CNB's Bank Board decided in February not to invest FX reserves in bitcoin at this time, but Michl framed the question as one every central bank will eventually have to answer.

• ⚖️ Alex Mashinsky, the Celsius founder currently serving a 12-year prison sentence, reached a $10 million FTC settlement that permanently bars him from promoting any product or service involving the deposit, exchange, or investment of assets. The court entered a broader $4.72 billion judgment tied to the Celsius collapse, though most of it is suspended unless Mashinsky is found to have misstated or concealed assets.

• 🔒 The DOJ, in coordination with FBI, Dubai Police, and China's Ministry of Public Security, arrested 276 people and dismantled at least nine overseas crypto scam centers running pig-butchering schemes targeting Americans. Dubai authorities made 275 of the arrests, and six defendants were charged in San Diego with federal wire fraud and money laundering.

• 📊 Monthly prediction market volume hit $25.7 billion in March, up 10.6% from February, per a joint report from Bitget Wallet and Polymarket. Sports was the largest category at $10.1 billion for Q1, while 82.3% of users traded under $10,000, confirming retail dominates the market.

• 🤖 OKX launched its Agent Payments Protocol, an open standard designed to let AI agents handle full commercial cycles onchain, from making offers and negotiating terms to running escrow and disputing transactions, not just one-off payments. Launch partners include Paxos, Uniswap, the Ethereum Foundation, Solana, AWS, and Alibaba Cloud, with the protocol built to run across chains using OKX's X Layer for zero or low-gas execution.

• 🇬🇧 A previously undisclosed £5 million gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, a 12% stakeholder in Tether, to Nigel Farage has drawn scrutiny from Labour and the Conservatives, who have referred the matter to Parliament's Standards Commissioner. Farage says the payment, made before he announced his 2024 election bid, covered personal security costs; Reform UK calls it a personal unconditional gift that complied with all rules.

• 🏦 Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains, adding Base, Polygon, Canton, Circle's Arc, and Stripe's Tempo to existing integrations with Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Stellar. The program has reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% quarter-over-quarter, and now powers more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across more than 50 countries.

• 🏦 Mezo launched Mezo Prime, an institutional bitcoin yield product built with Anchorage Digital Bank that lets corporate treasuries earn onchain yield from segregated, non-rehypothecated BTC vaults. Bullish deployed part of its bitcoin treasury into the product at launch, alongside a 250 BTC investment into Mezo, as more than 1 million BTC on public company balance sheets sits largely idle.

• 🌐 Shinhan Card signed an MOU with the Solana Foundation to collaborate on stablecoin payment technology and online payment infrastructure, building on a proof-of-concept the two completed last year. The partnership will test payment scenarios between customers and merchants on the Solana testnet, verify non-custodial wallet stability, and develop a hybrid finance model combining traditional and decentralized finance.

• 🏦 Stable Sea partnered with WisdomTree to bring tokenized Treasury access to small and medium-sized businesses, connecting SMB clients to institutional-grade short-term Treasury exposure previously out of reach for smaller companies.

• 💸 MoonPay acquired Israeli crypto security startup Sodot in an all-stock deal valued at about $100 million and launched MoonPay Institutional, a new business unit targeting banks, asset managers, and trading firms entering crypto. The unit is led by former CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham and will offer a single stack for custody, wallet management, onchain execution, stablecoin settlement, and tokenized securities, built on Sodot's self-hosted MPC infrastructure.

• 💸 Tether led Belo's $14 million Series A to expand the Argentina-based digital wallet's stablecoin-powered payments infrastructure across Latin America. Belo, which has over 3 million users and has operated profitably for three years, plans to use the capital to expand into Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay.

• 💸 Blockworks closed a Series A extension at a $192 million valuation co-led by ParaFi and Reciprocal Ventures, with backing from Coinbase Ventures and more than 20 founders from Solana, LayerZero, EigenLayer, and other protocols. The crypto data platform, which shuttered its news division last year to focus on data infrastructure, investor relations, and the Token Transparency Framework, plans to use the funds to acquire competitors and consolidate the fragmented crypto data market.

• 💸 Fence raised $20 million led by Galaxy Ventures to replace legacy trust and agency providers in the $15 trillion asset-backed finance market, which still largely runs on spreadsheets, PDFs, and email. The startup, which counts BlackRock, BBVA, and Fortress as clients and manages about $1.5 billion in assets, uses smart contracts behind the scenes to automate loan tracking, cash flow, and collateral verification.

• 💸 Squads raised $18 million led by Solana Ventures, with Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, and Jump Crypto participating, to scale Altitude, its stablecoin-native financial operating system for businesses. Altitude has processed over $200 million in payments since its December 2025 launch, letting companies run treasury, payments, and corporate cards on stablecoin rails instead of traditional banks.

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