They are whispering about a three million percent expansion in AI. It is a number so large it feels like a typo, a fever dream from a pitch deck. But the feeling behind it is real. The ground is shifting. We are moving past AI that just lives on screens, past chatbots that write poems. The talk now is of “manifested AI,” code that reaches out and touches the real world. Code that acts.
And when code begins to act, it also needs to pay. This is the part of the story that gets lost in the headlines. While everyone watches the big AI models get smarter, the quiet work happens in the plumbing. The unseen infrastructure companies that handle connectivity, processing, and data are where the real pressure is building. It is no surprise that AI-linked digital assets are running circles around traditional AI stocks.
Look at OpenAI. It is shedding its non-profit skin to become a full commercial creature, with Microsoft holding a heavy stake. This is not a science project anymore. It is a business maturing in plain sight. Then you see PayPal plugging into ChatGPT. They call it “agentic commerce.” A fancy term for a simple, profound idea: AIs will soon be buying things for us.
This creates a need for a new kind of money. Tiny, fast, programmable payments. Micropayments. The kind of thing Coinbase is building with its x402 standard. The kind of thing that makes traditional banking rails look like dirt roads next to a maglev train. The AI revolution will not be powered by ACH transfers that take three days to clear.
It will be powered by stablecoins. This is the other quiet story of the year. While we argue about Bitcoin’s price, stablecoins are methodically conquering global finance. They are becoming the default settlement layer for a world that needs money to move at the speed of information. This is a fundamental change, a decoupling from the old world’s reliance on central bank liquidity.
In Japan, the first yen-backed stablecoin has launched. It is not some wildcat experiment. It is collateralized by bank deposits and government bonds, with serious circulation targets. It is infrastructure. In America, Western Union is testing a USD Payment Token on Solana. Their goal is simple: make remittances cheaper and faster, and earn interest on the reserves while doing it.
Even Zelle, the network your cousin uses to send you birthday money, is looking at stablecoins for cross-border transfers. Tether, the eighty-pound gorilla of the space, is preparing a stablecoin focused specifically on the US. This is not a trend. It is an invasion. A quiet, orderly, and deeply significant one.
The money is becoming native to the internet. And once money is native, other assets want to join the party. The market for tokenized Real World Assets, or RWAs, is expected to swell. Ethereum looks positioned to capture a huge slice of this. You can already see it happening. Companies like Securitize and Shift Stocks are putting things like S&P 500 ETFs on-chain.
Why does this matter? Because it collapses settlement times, increases transparency, and opens up markets. It blurs the line between a stock and a token until the distinction no longer makes sense. It is the same force pulling AI into commerce and turning dollars into code. It is a great convergence.
Of course, this convergence makes people in power nervous. The regulatory mood in Washington is a strange mix of sunshine and thunder. You see a presidential pardon for a crypto founder and the nomination of a pro-crypto official to a key post. These feel like warm tailwinds. Then you hear sharp criticism from lawmakers who see only risk and want tighter chains.
The system is trying to digest something new and alien. You see it in an Indian court, which ruled that XRP should be treated as property, setting a precedent for custody. You see it inside Bitcoin itself, with a debate raging over a soft fork. Should the chain be purely for financial data, or a permissionless canvas for anything? The proposal to restrict non-financial data is a fight for Bitcoin’s soul.
Is it a pristine monetary network or a public utility for data? The fact that we are having this debate shows how far we have come. The stakes are higher now because the institutions are here. They are not just dipping a toe in. They are wading in waist-deep.
JPMorgan, once a vocal critic, now plans to let institutional clients use Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral for loans. Think about that. The world’s most iconic cryptocurrency, once dismissed as a fringe asset, is becoming acceptable collateral at a pillar of global finance. Citi is working with Coinbase to smooth out digital asset payments for its big clients.
A major company whose primary asset is Bitcoin just received a credit rating. That is a small, technical step that opens enormous doors for institutional capital. The ETFs are pushing past the usual suspects. We have seen Solana staking ETFs launch, alongside funds for Hedera and Litecoin. This is the slow, steady march of financialization.
Demand for the Bitcoin ETFs remains strong, but it is not evenly spread. The money is clustering in a few giant funds, while others are seeing outflows. This is a sign of a maturing market. The winners are beginning to separate from the pack. It is not enough to just show up anymore. You have to compete.
Nowhere is that competition fiercer than in Decentralized Finance. DeFi is growing up fast. Trading volumes for perpetuals, a type of crypto derivative, are hitting new records. Platforms like Hyperliquid are leading the charge, and they are not stopping at crypto. They are expanding to offer derivatives on traditional assets, bringing Wall Street’s products to the blockchain.
We are even seeing loyalty programs, a staple of airlines and coffee shops, appear in DeFi protocols to reward user activity. Under the hood, engineers are working to fix the economics of the blockchains themselves. Solana’s Block Assembly Marketplace is an attempt to address performance issues and make sure value flows to the right places.
It is not all smooth sailing. Some new projects still face questions about how their tokens were initially handed out. Transparency remains a challenge. But the user experience is getting better. The gap between a slick centralized exchange and a DeFi platform is shrinking. Soon, for many, there will be no reason to choose the centralized option.
All of this is happening against a familiar macroeconomic backdrop. Inflation data looks a little softer. The market is pricing in high odds of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates. That sends capital searching for risk and returns, and a lot of it is finding its way into crypto. The old patterns are holding. Gold surged, then consolidated. Bitcoin followed, just as it has before.
But there are crosscurrents. Some long-term Bitcoin holders are moving their coins out of deep storage, making their supply less illiquid. At the same time, the largest wallets, the whales, continue to buy. And in the background, the ghost of Mt. Gox still lingers. The final repayments from that ancient exchange hack are delayed yet again, keeping a huge stack of Bitcoin off the market.
Even the privacy coins, Zcash and Monero, have seen a flicker of life. Talk of halvings and a renewed interest in the privacy narrative have pushed them higher. It is a reminder that in this market, no story ever truly dies. It just waits for its moment to be told again.
The pieces are all on the board. Manifested AI needs new payment rails. Stablecoins are becoming those rails. Real-world assets are being pulled on-chain to run on them. Institutions are building the bridges. And DeFi is creating the new capital markets. It is all connected. The question is no longer if this new system will be built, but what it will feel like when we all start to live on it.