HashObserver

Business

Companies, financing, products and strategy across the crypto industry.

Business · News

Cash App's bitcoin fee cuts traded margin for a cheaper on-ramp

Block's SEC-filed Q1 letter shows Bitcoin Ecosystem gross profit down 26% year over year. The result exposes the economic choice behind cheaper retail trading.

2 min read
Business · Deep Dive

Stablecoins are becoming a payment rail. The hard part sits offchain

Visa, Mastercard and their infrastructure partners are moving tokenized dollars into treasury funding, settlement and payouts. The blockchain transfer is only one layer of the product.

2 min read
Business · News

Visa Direct adds Zero Hash rails for stablecoin funding and payouts

Eligible clients can use stablecoins on both sides of a Visa Direct transfer: to fund an account and to deliver value to a recipient. The capability is not a universal switch-on across Visa's network.

2 min read
Business · Data

TeraWulf's filed numbers already show a data-center company replacing a miner

HPC leasing supplied 62% of first-quarter revenue while bitcoin output more than halved. A later Anthropic lease extends the pivot, but its long-dated contract value is not current revenue.

2 min read
Business · Analysis

Mastercard is building an identity layer for stablecoin transfers

Crypto Credential maps verified users and supported destinations before value moves. Its importance lies in the control plane around a transfer, not a new stablecoin or chain.

2 min read
Business · News

BNY plans in-custody staking with Galaxy, pending regulatory review

Galaxy will supply proof-of-stake expertise and help design BNY's digital-asset platform. The planned service would connect custody, staking, accounting and reporting, but it is not yet an unconditional product launch.

2 min read
Business · Analysis

BNY is turning crypto custody into a servicing stack

Bitcoin and ether safekeeping was the entry point. USDC issuance and redemption, followed by planned staking, show BNY assembling the accounting and operational layer around institutional crypto assets.

2 min read
Business · Analysis

Robinhood found revenue beyond crypto. Coinbase still felt the spot cycle

Both companies reported weaker crypto activity in Q2. Robinhood replaced the missing revenue with event contracts, equities and interest income; Coinbase's newer lines did not yet absorb the decline.

3 min read
Business · Analysis

Cloudflare is putting stablecoin checkout at the edge of the web

Its Monetization Gateway turns an HTTP request into a priced transaction. The product could lower the cost of selling data and APIs, but demand, wallet control and accounting remain open questions.

3 min read
Business · News

Storj enters Chapter 11 while keeping its storage network online

The storage company says it will continue ordinary operations while restructuring legacy liabilities. Court approval will determine what happens next.

2 min read
Business · News

Circle wins final OCC approval for a national trust bank

Circle National Trust will begin with custody for Circle and its affiliates. Managing USDC reserves and serving outside institutions remain future capabilities.

2 min read