From crypto firms seeking bank charters to Circle’s payment network and energy-hungry centralized cloud systems, Web3 figures comment on the news of the week.
STABLE Act driving crypto firms to seek bank charters
“Reports that Circle, BitGo, and even Coinbase are considering applying for bank charters in the US come as little surprise, perhaps, when we consider the rapidly changing landscape for crypto in the country, especially stablecoins.
“Indeed, one of the key requirements of the STABLE Act, which is ahead of GENIUS in the approval race, requires a compliant stablecoin issuer to hold its reserves separately from business funds to ensure consumer safety.
“A bank charter, though, would allow crypto firms to operate like traditional banks, i.e. take deposits and use them to make loans. For the world’s second-biggest stablecoin issuer, this might, perhaps, be a very useful capability.
“Beyond this, as we have learned from global banking, lending using customer assets is one of the best ways to make money. Indeed, in crypto, we’ve seen this happen in a very non-compliant way, where bad actors made a lot of money in a very short amount of time.
“And so, it would make sense that some of crypto‘s biggest providers are now aspiring to be both compliant and highly profitable. And, for some, a bank charter may well be a good way to achieve that.”
– Patrick Young, head of GTM at Web3 growth platform Galxe
Circle’s payment network is an important Web3 step, but more is needed
“The news that Circle is planning to launch a new crypto payments and remittances network that eventually rivals Visa and Mastercard is an exciting sign of where the industry is going. We’re getting closer and closer to a future where Web3 payments are fully integrated into the traditional financial system, and this is encouraging to see.
“However, while crypto payments can and should be as easy as Visa and Mastercard, a dedicated remittances system alone isn’t enough to make this a reality. An entire ecosystem is required to integrate crypto into traditional payments, including user-friendly interfaces, wallet-to-bank integrations, and interoperable digital identity infrastructure.
“Digital asset payments must be as easy, if not easier, than traditional payments to make people use crypto daily. This is a dream we all have, but we’re nowhere near there yet. It’s great to see Circle doing something about this, but we need to see a lot more action from crypto infrastructure projects to get to this vision. And it’s time we all worked together and harnessed the power of our communities so crypto can not only rival traditional payment networks, but surpass them.”
– Alice Shikova, marketing lead at digital identity platform SPACE ID
Power-hogging centralized cloud systems highlight decentralized cloud systems as a better option
“News that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is putting pressure on Japan’s government to increase its investment in power stations to run Nvidia‘s excessive GPUs to expand the country’s AI capabilities underlines the enormous cost associated with the current centralized cloud system.
“For the crypto community, it also flies in the face of any criticism of Bitcoin mining emissions when a tech company heavily invested in by many of these same critics is encouraging Japan to invest $44 billion into piping fossil fuel into the country from Alaska.
“Already, global data centers consume nearly 3% of the world’s electricity, with this figure expected to at least double by 2030. The expansion of these mega data centers, largely run on Nvidia chips, has both serious ecological and financial implications for end users, when the fact is, we simply don’t need them.
“The launch of major AI disruptors in China like DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen have proven we don’t need these masses of Nvidia beefed-up GPUs to train and run AI. Nvidia makes 75% profit on its $30,000-$50,000 chips, with that cost ultimately passed down through mega cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google to the end user.
“Indeed, research shows that decentralized cloud networks are between 80% and 90% cheaper for the average business than AWS. And so, Nvidia lobbying a global leader to invest heavily in fossil fuel to invest heavily in its GPU chips should underline the key motivations of the centralized cloud industry, and the urgent need to move to decentralized models.”
– Kai Wawrzinek, co-founder of Impossible Cloud Network