🤝 By way of Introduction(.com)

Welcome to the Introduction.com newsletter

Where 🚦 Signal > Noise 🔈

You’re now reading the same newsletter trusted by founders, investors, and executives across Coinbase, Stripe, A16Z, and the top L1s in crypto

Introduction.com is a private members' network for the operators shaping this industry behind the scenes

300+ members. Zero fluff. Just direct access to what matters

(ps, we just started reviewing applications. Keep an eye on your inbox.)

Introduction.com Updates (Members):

Coming Soon:

👶 New Member Announcements:

The Introduction.com team is super excited to announce the newest additions to our community this week!

(We’d love to see you up here one day🤠)

Apply Today

Brian Johnson @ *Stealth Mode

Luis Felipe Mejía @ Trillion Digital

🍾 Member Wins:

Our members are some of the brightest and hardest working minds in crypto; the people who are behind the scenes fighting some of the biggest battles for our industry so when they win, we all do!

Olivia Lo @ Aptos Labs

🌟 This summer is turning into a land grab for the future of money movement. From Ripple scooping up Rail, to Stripe building Tempo, to Tether-backed Stable launching its own chain, everyone’s gunning for the same prize: control of the rails that tokenized dollars will run on. The tokens themselves might be interchangeable, but the infrastructure underneath is where the power (and the revenue) lives. In payments, the rails decide who gets paid — literally.🌟

Ripple’s $200M acquisition of Rail makes a major splash 💦

Guard Rails 🚧

Rail, founded in 2021 as Layer2 Financial, is a Toronto-based payment platform. It bridges stablecoin rails with traditional banking, offering virtual EUR/GBP/USD accounts, stablecoin wallets, FX and auto conversion, and back-office tools. 

In English, they route payments over bank partners or stablecoins, auto-converting fiat↔stablecoin↔fiat, based on cost/speed.

Founders 🧱

Major Milestones 🪨

Rail began in 2021 as Layer2 Financial in Toronto, with a mission to modernize cross-border and B2B payments for enterprises that needed speed without sacrificing compliance. 

By 2024, after securing an $11M Series A led by Galaxy Digital/Ventures with backing from Accomplice, Sapphire Ventures, and Rubik Ventures, the company rebranded to Rail to signal its laser focus on instant, cross-border settlements. 

This pivot aligned it directly with the emerging “stablecoin highway” race, the competition to own the rails that will carry the world’s tokenized dollars. 

By 2025, Rail was publicly processing $10B annually, commanding roughly 10% of all B2B stablecoin payment activity. That scale and positioning make Rail not just another payments processor, but a contender to shape the infrastructure layer where TradFi meets DeFi.

Wave Hello to Ripple 👋

Ripple has been in the payments game since 2012, with the aim: to cut settlement from days to seconds with lower fees.

In traditional cross-border payments, banks must pre-fund foreign currency accounts in each destination country, locking up millions in idle capital while still waiting 1–3 days for SWIFT settlement.

Ripple creates a direct, blockchain-based bridge for settlement that bypasses the long, costly path through correspondent banks.

For example, a business in Singapore paying a contractor in Brazil can both settle in USD without touching US bank rails. The sender converts local currency to RLUSD, sends it across RippleNet in seconds, and the recipient can either hold RLUSD on-chain as USD or instantly cash out into local USD-equivalent fiat.

The transaction is instant and neither party needs to interact with TradFi in order to get paid. 

Enter Rail 🚆

Until now, RLUSD was roadblocked when it came to meeting institutional or business needs. 

In the example of a business in Singapore paying a contractor in Brazil: the final leg of the payment journey was finalized in RLUSD. This means both parties would be forced to rely on DeFi systems to pay or get paid. Users had to navigate exchanges, build DeFi wallets, or manage crypto custody, not ideal for banks or enterprises. 

Rail was built to fill exactly that gap, seamlessly converting funds into a country’s native currency and delivering them directly into the recipient’s traditional bank account.

The Deal 💼

Ripple has taken a strategic, $20M, stake in Rail through a private round announced in July 2025. The partnership will see Rail’s tokenization and settlement infrastructure integrated directly into Ripple’s enterprise payment suite.

This will now allow RippleNet to issue and settle tokenized assets seamlessly. 

For institutions already relying on Ripple’s compliance-first network, this means faster go-to-market for tokenized products without the burden of building new infrastructure. 

Timing is Everything ⏳

This move has been years in the making, as Ripple has long eyed the tokenization market through its CBDC and stablecoin initiatives. 

Rail’s technology filled the missing link, enabling Ripple to shift from interest to deployment. 

Sources suggest the relationship began through an APAC banking contact during early 2024 pilot projects, with formal deal discussions kicking off in Q1 2025.

Market Reaction 📈

The market welcomed the news, with XRP climbing +4% on announcement day and Rail’s RAIL token jumping +28% in 24 hours before settling at a +15% gain for the week.

Analysts were quick to frame it as “instant product-market fit,” combining Ripple’s established institutional reach with Rail’s turnkey tokenization stack. 

The consensus: this pairing accelerates the path to real-world asset adoption at scale.

Looking Ahead 🔮

Ripple’s endgame is clear: make tokenized money as seamless as sending an email. 

With Rail, they just cut years off the build timeline. It bridges the friction between digital money and legacy accounts, and accelerates the path from blockchain ledger to real-world usability.

Expect early pilots with existing RippleNet banks before year-end, likely starting in Asia and the Middle East where Ripple’s CBDC pilots are already live.

BOB aka Build on Bitcoin

BOB announces an additional $9.5M strategic funding round to build the Bitcoin Super-Rollup 🏗️

Origin Story 🍼

BOB (Build on Bitcoin) isn’t just another L2 copy-paste. Founded by Alexei Zamyatin and Sreeram Kannan, it’s a hybrid EVM-friendly rollup secured by Bitcoin, heading toward trust-minimized native BTC settlement via BitVM.

Translation: Instead of being a standalone chain, it’s a “rollup”. Basically a system that processes lots of transactions quickly and then settles them securely on Bitcoin. The end goal is to let people use Bitcoin directly in these apps without having to trust middlemen, using a new technology called BitVM to make it happen.

BitVM is a way to make Bitcoin’s blockchain programmable without changing Bitcoin itself.

Right now, Bitcoin is very secure but not very flexible. You can send and receive BTC, but you can’t easily run complex applications on it like you can on Ethereum. BitVM changes that by letting you run smart contracts off-chain (somewhere else) and only use Bitcoin’s blockchain to check if the results are correct.

From the start, the mission was bold: anchor EVM DeFi to Bitcoin’s unmatched security without sacrificing speed or tooling. Or as Alexei put it, “If you manage to win in Bitcoin DeFi, you win the entire market.”

Translation: bring Ethereum-style apps to Bitcoin, but with BTC as the base layer asset.

The Deal 💼

BOB closed a $9.5M funding round last week, pushing its total raise to ~$21M. 

Castle Island Ventures led the round, joined by Mechanism Capital, Bankless Ventures, and other infrastructure-focused funds betting big on Bitcoin DeFi.

The funding will fuel two priorities:

“Bitcoin’s security combined with Ethereum’s programmability isn’t just additive — it’s transformative.” - Nic Carter, General Partner, Castle Island Ventures

Timeline of Key Milestones 🛣️

Why it Matters 🔍

BOB’s edge comes from blending two things competitors rarely combine:

BOB has the largest reported total user count with over 553,000 users. This coupled with their tech stack has them poised to launch 🚀

Market Reaction 📈

Following the announcement, BOB’s token jumped +18% in 24 hours, settling at +12% for the week. 

BTC-based DeFi tokens broadly saw a sympathy lift, with Stacks (STX) up ~7% and Rootstock’s RBTC up ~5%. 

Analysts flagged BOB’s already-strong $212M TVL as proof of “instant product–market fit” in a sector that’s been starved for credible Bitcoin DeFi plays.

What’s Next 🔮

With funding secured and BitVM integration on the horizon, BOB’s roadmap for the next 12 months is aggressive. Expect to see:

Competitors like Stacks and Rootstock will need to either embrace trustless BTC interoperability or risk being left as niche smart-contract layers with limited liquidity flow. If BOB executes, it won’t just be another Bitcoin L2 — it could redefine BTC’s role in DeFi altogether.

Stable

Stable lands $28M to build the “Stablechain” — USDT as the internet’s gas pump 💵⛽

Origin Story 🍼

Stable was founded in 2024 inside Bitfinex with a clear mission: make stablecoins the native currency of blockchain transactions. The idea was to eliminate volatile token fees and build rails that merchants and enterprises could rely on without worrying about price swings.

“We believe payments should feel instant, predictable, and familiar. By making USDT the engine under the hood, we are removing complexity for everyone from consumers to global payment processors,” said Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex CTO and Tether CEO, during the funding announcement.

The Founders 👤

• Paolo Ardoino (Chairman) – CTO of Tether and Bitfinex, veteran in blockchain infrastructure and liquidity systems.

• Jorge Perez (CEO) – Former Bitfinex product lead specializing in exchange architecture and high-frequency trading platforms.

• Sarah Kim (Head of Ecosystem) – Ex-Visa APAC partnerships lead, experience in enterprise merchant integration and digital payment adoption.

Founders & leadership 👥

• Joshua Harding — Founder and CEO. Founder of Stable and public face of the raise, focused on USDT-native payments infrastructure.   

• Advisors and angels. Backers include Bryan Johnson (Braintree), Nathan McCauley (Anchorage), among others.

The Deal 💼

Stable raised $28 million in seed funding on July 31, 2025, co-led by Bitfinex and Hack VC.

Participation from Franklin Templeton, Castle Island Ventures, KuCoin Ventures, Mirana/Bybit and others. 

Harding said the round used SAFE plus token warrants. Funds will support mainnet launch, USDT-native gas payments, and merchant and PSP integrations.    

Why It Matters 🏗️

Stable’s chain will launch with USDT as the native gas and settlement currency, meaning fees are priced in dollars, not ETH, MATIC, or other volatile tokens. 

That’s a big win for merchants and enterprises that run tight margins and can’t risk fluctuating gas costs. 

The mainnet, targeted for late Q3–Q4 2025, will prioritize low-latency payments, enterprise compliance hooks, and “priority execution” for institutional flows. 

In practice, that means a PSP or merchant using Stable will be able to settle USDT payments instantly, with regulatory-grade reporting baked in — no bolted-on compliance layers.

Use of Funds 💰

The $28M will fuel mainnet launch, developer onboarding, and merchant integration pilots. 

Stable plans to build out a partner network of payment processors, e-commerce platforms, and point-of-sale providers to drive early USDT transaction volume on-chain. 

Part of the budget is also earmarked for compliance operations in key jurisdictions, a nod to the fact that scaling stablecoin rails globally requires as much legal engineering as it does technical.

Market Reaction 📈

The announcement came with modest but notable bumps: USDT trading pairs on Bitfinex saw a 6% spike in daily volume, 

while mentions of “Stablechain” across crypto Twitter jumped ~250% in the first 48 hours. 

Analysts view the round as a strategic positioning move for Tether to defend market share as other stablecoin-first chains like Plasma gear up for launch. As one investor at Castle Island Ventures put it: “If stablecoins are the internet’s money, Stable is building the first highway.”

_IRL:

_{ETHGlobal New York 2025, New York City; 8/15-8/17} 🗽

_{Coinfest Asia, Bali; 8/21-8/22 🏄‍♂️}

_{Introduction.com Members only Soirée, NYC; TBA} 👀

Pantera Survey

Digital Dollars Dominance 💵🌐

Pantera Capital’s 2nd Bi-Annual blockchain compensation survey just dropped! 

Wow. That was a mouthful 😛

Let's try again. 

The institutional investor Pantera Capital. The one that invests in early-stage Web3 ventures, tokens, and funds. They do this survey every 6 months where they ask people how they get paid. Dollars or Crypto? TradFi or DeFi. etc. 

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Pantera reached out to ~1,600 professionals across 77 countries across their network and portfolio companies.

The fact that the lion’s share of crypto-based payroll is in USDC is telling. Especially when you consider the study spanned 77 countries…

Payroll as Proof: The Stablecoin Highway in Action 🛣️

Salaries are one of the most recurring and high-trust financial flows in any economy. If payroll is shifting to stablecoins, it is not just a use case, it is a validation of the broader stablecoin highway thesis. 

The companies that own these rails are positioning themselves to control the infrastructure for salaries, merchant transactions, supplier invoices, and cross-border settlements alike.

The competitive race is not about who issues the token, but who owns the rails that carry it.

Looking Ahead 🔮

The scoreboard is clear: the dollar still dominates, even in Web3, with USDC and USDT carrying the bulk of transaction volume.

And while owning the stablecoin highway is the endgame, that road will not be built on hype alone.

It will be paved where TradFi meets DeFi, where compliance and trust meet speed and interoperability. 

The winners will be those who can move tokenized dollars across borders instantly, without losing the regulatory backbone that keeps institutions in the game. The race is on and for now, the dollar is still the car everyone is driving.

Anchorpoint Filing

The Summer of Stablecoins ☀️💵

It is starting to feel like the summer of stablecoins. 

Just as the US moves closer to a federal stablecoin framework, Hong Kong is finalizing its own: the HKMA Stablecoin Issuance Ordinance. 

The ordinance requires any issuer of fiat-referenced stablecoins to obtain a license and meet strict capital, reserve, and reporting standards. 

On the heels of this regulatory clarity comes the news: Anchorpoint, a new joint venture, has officially filed its application to become one of Hong Kong’s first licensed stablecoin issuers.

The Joint Venture 🤝

Anchorpoint is not a startup in the traditional sense. It is a carefully engineered alliance between three heavyweight players:

The partnership reportedly took shape in late 2024, sparked by conversations between Standard Chartered’s digital assets division and Animoca’s leadership during a Web3 conference in Singapore. 

Must have been one hell of an introduction 👀

The goal is straightforward: leverage the credibility of TradFi, the creativity and network effects of Web3, and the infrastructure of a telecom giant to create a compliant, mass-market stablecoin product.

The Filing and the Play 📝

Anchorpoint’s license application targets the creation of a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin (HKD-R) designed for both retail and institutional flows. The joint venture is betting on being first to market once licenses are issued, positioning themselves as the default “HKD on-chain” provider.

Pros:

Cons:

Market Reaction & Broader Implications 📈

The announcement drew attention across both finance and crypto circles. While token markets didn’t move, no assets have launched yet, analysts see this as a blueprint for how Web2 and Web3 partnerships can win licenses in high-compliance jurisdictions. 

The move also signals Hong Kong’s intention to become the “Singapore of stablecoins,” attracting issuers, payment providers, and digital asset infrastructure players looking for a regulatory home in Asia.

Looking Ahead 🔮

If approved, Anchorpoint’s stablecoin could become the transactional backbone for everything from cross-border trade settlements to gaming microtransactions. 

In the stablecoin “highway” race, this is a full-stack on-ramp: TradFi, Web3, and telco all in one. 

But the key will be execution: moving from a licensing win to actual market penetration before competitors like Ant International, JD.com, or regional CBDC pilots steal the spotlight.

Stripe

Earn Your Stripes 🐯

Looks like Stripe has the eye of the tiger 😎

Crypto-twitter is buzzing with the news that Stripe is developing its own L1 blockchain, Tempo, built in partnership with Paradigm.

It’s a statement of intent: Stripe isn’t content to integrate with existing rails. it wants to own them outright.

Tempo is pitched as a “high-performance, payments-focused blockchain” designed specifically for Stripe’s massive fintech customer base. 

In a market where stablecoin settlements are rapidly becoming the default for cross-border commerce, Tempo positions Stripe to control not just the checkout experience, but the underlying money movement layer itself.

Market & Community Reaction 📢

Crypto Twitter split into two camps: the “ambitious and exciting” crowd and the “why reinvent the wheel?” skeptics.

Some argued Stripe could have pulled a Robinhood move: launching a customized Ethereum L2 and leveraging existing network effects without the headaches of bootstrapping an L1.

Others questioned whether Stripe can realistically out-engineer the ETH L2 ecosystem or established stablecoin rails like Ripple x Rail, Stable, or Plasma.

The most cynical take: “They could just run this on AWS,” implying that a blockchain might be unnecessary for Stripe’s goals unless they truly want to own the settlement layer.

Broader Implications 🌐

Stripe’s Tempo blockchain is not just a tech launch, it is a strategic move in the race to control the “stablecoin highways” of the future. 

In payments, the rails matter more than the tokens themselves. Whoever owns the infrastructure that stablecoins run on will have a stranglehold on transaction flow, settlement fees, and enterprise integration.

This is the same playbook we’ve seen with Ripple’s Rail acquisition, Stable’s USDT-native chain, and Plasma’s CBDC-focused network. 

The difference is that Stripe is coming in from the Web2 fintech side, already plugged into millions of merchants, marketplaces, and platforms. It does not need to bootstrap adoption in order to build out its vision.

By building their own L1 instead of riding on Ethereum L2s, Stripe is signaling that they want to own the base layer entirely .

It’s a high-confidence bet that they can out-engineer not just ETH rollups but also existing settlement rails. And if they succeed, they won’t just process payments, they’ll control the financial plumbing underneath them.

Looking Ahead 🔮

If Tempo delivers on its promise, Stripe could leapfrog many crypto-native projects by virtue of its existing reach and trust with merchants. But the challenge is steep: they must attract developers, secure liquidity, and prove that their rails offer tangible advantages over the deeply entrenched Ethereum ecosystem and other L1/L2 solutions.

The summer of stablecoins is heating up, and with Stripe now in the game, the competition to own the highways of tomorrow’s payments just got a lot more crowded.

✨ From fintech giants to blockchain upstarts, the message is the same: the battle for the stablecoin highway is on, and no one’s sitting in the passenger seat. Ripple is plugging Rail into its enterprise engine, Stripe is paving its own Tempo from scratch, Tether’s Stable is turning USDT into the internet’s gas pump, and Hong Kong’s Anchorpoint is laying compliant rails for an entire region. The tokens may all look like dollars, but the rails they ride on decide who collects the tolls. Whoever wins this race won’t just process payments, they’ll control the plumbing of the digital economy. Buckle up — the on-ramps are getting crowded, and the speed limit hasn’t been posted yet. ✨