26th June 2025 > > Coinbase, LINK, & Mastercard.

tl;dr

Coinbase is a winner. Chainlink may well prove to be one too, as it helps drive the onboarding of potentially billions of new retail crypto investors.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

The psychologically important $100k is proving to be a firm foundation for the price of BTC. As events in the Middle East deteriorated, there was a brief dip to $98.5k but that quickly got bought. BTC stayed below $100k for less than seven hours in total. I don’t need to remind you that one day no-one will be able to buy BTC for less than six figures ever again. That day is likely to come soon, if it has not yet already arrived.

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This is from behind a paywall, courtesy of Ecoinometrics (https://www.ecoinometrics.com/) a very valuable research tool. The implications must be obvious to everyone.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Coinbase

Coinbase goes from strength to strength. It has been awarded a MiCA license by the regulator in Luxembourg, allowing it to operate throughout the entirety of the EU’s regulatory orbit.

I read that there has been some criticism of Coinbase as a result, with accusations of using Luxembourg as an easy entry into the EU, but this makes little sense to me. The EU’s regulatory approach is a rules-based tick-box exercise, with emphasis on caution, as opposed to the principles-based approach here in the UK which allows for a degree of nuance, context, and interpretation. The latter is always going to be the superior approach in regulation as well as life, but the EU will not mend its ways now. The point is, I doubt that bureaucrats in Luxembourg are more inclined to tick the correct boxes than those in France, Germany, or Italy.

It is also odd that these criticisms have been levelled at Coinbase but never at any TradFi firm using the Luxembourg regulator as an entry point into the EU. I wonder why that might be.

Answers, as always, on a postcard to CC Towers.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto adoption, everywhere you look

Chainlink and Mastercard have announced a strategic partnership which sounds very interesting:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chainlink-and-mastercard-partner-to-enable-over-3-billion-cardholders-to-purchase-crypto-directly-onchain-302489729.html

There is a complicated setup here in the background, with the objective of making life very easy for retail customers of Mastercard to buy cryptos on-chain, without the need for a centralised cryptocurrency exchange (Coinbase cannot rule the whole world). The press release describes the backend, which will remain invisible to users:

“Swapper Finance leverages XSwap, the leading DEX built out of the Chainlink ecosystem that uses the Chainlink standard for data and interoperability, via an integration between zerohash and Shift4 Payments. zerohash provides the core compliance, custody, and transaction infrastructure, making it possible to convert fiat into crypto for smart contract consumption in a regulated manner. Shift4 enables seamless card processing, while XSwap sources liquidity from decentralized exchanges like the Uniswap protocol, enabling the final execution of swaps onchain. Together, these technologies create a unified, compliant, and intuitive user experience that brings crypto access directly to mainstream payment cardholders.”

Given the work and the senior management time that a project like this entails, Mastercard has only got involved because it believes that the demand for this service will robustly justify the costs of providing it.

So, that’s a whole lot of new retail investors now given one-click access to starting a crypto portfolio, which can only be good for our bags.

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By way of disclosure, the CC Treasury has been an investor in LINK, the token native to the Chainlink ecosystem, since its earliest days. LINK is a very risky, long-term play, but if it gets it right, it has the potential to be at the heart of the crypto revolution.