The fintech giant Stripe is developing a new blockchain, according to a recent job posting on a site for the crypto lobby group Blockchain Association. “Tempo is a high-performance, payments-focused blockchain,” reads the job advertisement, which is for a product marketing position and dated Aug. 3. 

The posting goes on to say that Tempo is in stealth, has a team of five, and is being built in partnership with Paradigm—a crypto venture capital firm whose cofounder and managing partner, Matt Huang, is on the board of Stripe. Applicants for the marketing position should have “experience marketing to a Fortune 500 audience,” per the ad.

The blockchain is a layer 1, or not built on top of other protocols, and it’s compatible with the coding language used on the blockchain Ethereum, according to four sources briefed on the matter. All sources requested anonymity to talk about private business conversations. 

Spokespeople for Stripe and Paradigm declined to comment. The job posting was taken down after Fortune reached out to both companies.

Tempo is the latest bet on crypto from Stripe, which has grown to an almost $92 billion valuation on the back of payment products like easy online checkout and automated invoicing for businesses. 

In October, Stripe announced it was paying $1.1 billion for the stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, its largest acquisition to date. And in June, the payments titan said it bought the crypto wallet developer Privy. (It didn’t disclose the price.) 

Stripe’s crypto shopping spree comes amid a rush of interest in stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar. Boosters say the crypto assets are a more effective payment technology than legacy financial infrastructure like SWIFT or wires. They also argue that the technology can reduce cross-border payment costs as well as cut down on transaction fees, among other benefits. 

Although stablecoins have existed for more than a decade, broader interest in the technology has picked up steam over the past year, especially after President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July. The bill outlines federal regulatory guidance and rules for the burgeoning sector of crypto.

Stablecoins have become such a buzzy subject in the world of payments that even Big Tech giants like Meta, Apple, and Airbnb are exploring stablecoin integrations—but Stripe is leading the charge. “We are now seeing meaningful business interest in stablecoins as the underlying technology has matured,” Patrick Collison, cofounder and CEO of Stripe, said in testimony to the House in March.

Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge gives the fintech ownership of a platform that helps companies integrate stablecoins into their payment flows and issue their own. And its purchase of Privy gives it the ability to build out crypto wallets for customers to help them manage their holdings. A new blockchain would allow it to control another layer in the stablecoin tech stack—the servers that process stablecoin transactions.

Stripe hasn’t publicly stated its reasons for building a blockchain. It also hasn’t said it intends to issue a cryptocurrency to support it—a common move for founders of a new crypto protocol.

Update, Aug. 11, 2025: This article has been updated to note that the job posting has since been taken down after Fortune reached out to Stripe and Paradigm for comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Sometimes, amid the memecoins and pay-for-access scandals, it can be difficult to remember that the crypto industry was built on the principles of privacy and autonomy. The elusive Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, after all. Even as Wall Street swallows blockchain technology whole, the core is still a spirit of disintermediation. 

I joined Fortune in August 2022, the same month that the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, a virtual currency mixer that allowed users to input their (very traceable) cryptocurrency holdings and receive an anonymous output. The software, predictably, became a favorite of terrorist organizations and North Korean-affiliated hacking groups, but it also embodied the cypherpunk ideology that birthed the crypto sector.

OFAC’s action created novel questions, such as whether a piece of code, rather than a person or organization, can be sanctioned. It also drew the ire of privacy advocates, who argued that internet users should have the right to own and send digital cash without government interference, just as offline people can with physical cash (to a degree). These, more than crypto bros trying to drive up the price of their tokens through sex toy-related stunts, are the fascinating dilemmas raised by blockchain technology, and what sets it apart from other forms of financial technology. (And as much as I hoped topics like Tornado Cash would dominate my coverage, Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire collapsed two months later.) 

A year after the sanctions, the Department of Justice brought charges against the creators of Tornado Cash, with one, Roman Storm, arrested in the United States. This was a tricky case for the crypto industry to get behind. The DOJ’s indictment made clear that the founders knew their software’s main utility was to help money launderers, including North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and they were earning millions of dollars off the platform through their own proprietary token. In a recurring segment I like to call “Are you taking notes on a criminal f***ing conspiracy,” one founder admitted over text that they had to relinquish control over the software to make it seem like they weren’t the owners. As one former DOJ prosecutor told me at the time, “These are pretty egregious facts.” 

But many powerful voices in the crypto industry, including the venture giant Paradigm, still threw their weight behind Storm, arguing that the government’s case eroded the idea of privacy-preserving software and was in direct contradiction to previous guidance issued by the financial crimes division of the Treasury Department. 

Storm’s initial trial, which was held in the same courthouse that hosted Bankman-Fried, wrapped up last week. Though he avoided two of the more serious charges, the jury still found him guilty on one, related to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. His advocates are vowing to fight it, arguing that the decision sets a dangerous precedent for the future of privacy software. 

The more interesting question is why the case was allowed to continue under the Trump administration, which has broadly embraced the crypto sector—or at least the elements more tied to financial gains. The Securities and Exchange Commission abandoned cases against Coinbase and Justin Sun, and the DOJ issued a memo announcing the end of “regulation by prosecution” against the blockchain industry. They even dropped one of the lesser charges against Storm about registration. But the core charge—that a developer should be responsible for non-custodial software—was allowed to continue. 

The refrain since Trump returned to office has been that, thanks to the lax new regulatory approach, crypto enforcement is off the table. Unfortunately for Storm, it seems that’s restricted to memecoins.   

Leo Schwartz
X: @leomschwartz
Email: [email protected]

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Stablecoins are the shiny new object on Wall Street. Once restricted to the niche world of crypto trading, stablecoins entered the mainstream of U.S. finance as Congress debated—and ultimately passed in July—a bill to legitimize them and expand their use. That has spurred a hype cycle as banks and Fortune 500 companies rush to explore the technology. 

Stablecoins, which are typically pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed 1:1 to a pool of reserves, have been around for a decade. But their soaring popularity has brought mounting questions over how their growth could impact the broader economy. Financial experts and government officials alike are grappling with the implications of giant stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle becoming some of the largest holders of U.S. Treasuries, rivaling countries like South Korea and Saudi Arabia. 

While crypto proponents argue that stablecoins will help extend dollar dominance across the globe, critics warn that they could lead to financial instability in the banking sector, even as they remain a tiny portion of overall markets. 

A new financial plumbing

To get a sense of stablecoins’ growing popularity, it’s worth noting that their transaction volume surpassed Visa in early 2024. While much of this activity occured in the context of crypto trading, it supported advocates’ case that stablecoins’ low fees and near-instantaneous speeds make them a superior vehicle to older technology like SWIFT, especially when it comes to moving money across borders. That argument has broken out of the crypto industry, with the fintech giant Stripe acquiring the stablecoin startup Bridge last year for $1.1 billion. 

In order to ensure a stablecoin maintains on par with a dollar, most issuers purchase large quantities of Treasury bills to serve as the bulk of their reserves. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, holds over $100 billion in T-bills, according to its latest attestation, which ranks it ahead of countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Germany. According to a July report from Apollo, the stablecoin industry as a whole is now the 18th largest external holder of Treasuries. 

To be fair, this is still a blip compared to the U.S. money market fund sector, which stands at around $7 trillion, mostly comprised of Treasuries. But, especially with July’s passage of the Genius Act, stablecoins are only likely to grow, with Apollo estimating that the sector could reach $2 trillion by 2028. The market cap of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin, has grown 90% over the past year to $65 billion. Its parent company, Circle, went public in June, delivering the largest two-day IPO pop in decades. 

At a time when longtime holders of U.S. Treasuries, including China and Japan, are signaling they will move away from the asset class, the emergence of stablecoin issuers as a new buyer of T-bills could serve as an escape valve for the U.S. government. “Having stablecoin issuers always be there is a massive boost in terms of giving confidence to the Treasury [Department] about where to place debt,” said Yesha Yadav, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who wrote a recent paper on the relationship between stablecoins and the U.S. Treasury market. 

Crypto proponents go even further, arguing that the benefits could ripple across the U.S. economy and beyond. They say the growth of stablecoins could consolidate the dollar’s dominance as a method of payment for foreign payments, similar to the “eurodollar” (a term that signals dollar deposits held outside the U.S.), and could help the U.S. government enforce sanctions abroad. David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, went so far as to argue that new demand for U.S. Treasuries from stablecoin companies could lower long-term interest rates.

Others—including Yadav and State Street’s global head of cash and digital asset, Kim Hochfeld—are more skeptical, especially given the nascent sector’s footprint. “There’s a lot of hype, and the numbers are still tiny compared to what we see in normal TradFi,” Hochfeld told Fortune. “While I don’t deny this is the start of a big trend, the numbers are still not enough to make us either super excited or super nervous.”

Some critics, including bank lobbying groups, have warned that stablecoins could siphon money away from bank deposits as customers shift holdings to stablecoins. Because deposits serve as necessary liquidity for lending, they argue, stablecoins could threaten the credit system. One stablecoin executive, who spoke with Fortune on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive industry relationships, described the argument as “politically expedient,” pointing out that bank lobbying groups have previously invoked the argument to resist the introduction of now commonplace financial instruments like money market funds. 

“There are trillions of dollars in money market funds,” said the executive, “Ultimately, it didn’t affect banks being able to make loans.”

Yadav said that stablecoins’ growth could still lead to unintended outcomes, especially as they hoover up short-term Treasuries, which many Wall Street institutions rely on for risk management and other forms of financial engineering. “What that means for the rest of the financial system as [stablecoins] become gargantuan is anybody’s guess,” she told Fortune. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The Trump family business World Liberty Financial is planning to announce a crypto treasury company, say three investors who have seen parts of the deal. The plan, according to details shopped around to investors and viewed by Fortune, revolves around a publicly traded company that would hold a combination of World Liberty’s proprietary token WLFI and cash. 

The proposal also calls for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to serve on the board, and hopes to raise $1.5 billion to fund the new company.

If the plan goes forward, it would be the latest addition to the Trump family’s fast-growing crypto empire. The Trump family first announced the World Liberty crypto project last fall, launching a series of products including the WLFI token, which has netted $550 million in sales, as well as its own stablecoin, USD1. 

A spokesperson for World Liberty declined to comment. Spokespeople for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment.

The planned treasury company comes amid a boom in so-called “digital asset treasury companies,” or publicly traded firms that hold large stashes of cryptocurrency on their balance sheets. According to details shared with investors, the planned treasury company for World Liberty’s token is a shell firm that is already listed on the NASDAQ, and that it has already acquired.

The concept of crypto treasury companies was pioneered by billionaire Michael Saylor, who remade his software company MicroStrategy into a vehicle to acquire Bitcoin in 2020 then renamed it Strategy in 2025. Traders soon saw the company’s stock as a proxy for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, and bought up its shares as Bitcoin’s price increased.

For Strategy, the tactic proved so successful that it went on to accumulate more than $72 billion worth of the cryptocurrency and reached a market capitalization of almost $113 billion, despite reporting only $115 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2025.

Crypto investors saw the boom in Strategy’s valuation and followed suit. Early copycats included a budget hotel company in Japan, which began adding Bitcoin in 2024, as well as a handful of other companies that joined the trend later that year.

But this year, the practice has accelerated. There are now treasury companies for Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. There are also others for a growing number of cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin, Sui, and Ethena. Meanwhile, another Trump family venture, Trump Media, bought $2 billion of Bitcoin earlier this summer for its own treasury. 

Advocates say the treasury companies let traditional investors, who may be constrained by what they can trade through brokerages like Vanguard, trade cryptocurrencies and gain exposure to the digital assets market.

But an increasing number of investors have warned that the trend is a fad and say many of these companies may be at risk of collapse as the current crypto boom subsides.

Aside from World Liberty Financial, which promises to launch different decentralized financial applications built around its token and stablecoin, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have both launched their own memecoins. Eric and Donald Jr. are also deeply involved in the blockchain industry, including their backing of a Bitcoin mining company.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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