Morning Minute: Citi and Coinbase Just Made Stablecoins Invisible

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show ‘FOMO HOUR’ covering all of the top stories and market action.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors rebound 1-2% as oil and yields fall; BTC at $84.4k
• Citi and Coinbase partner to enable stablecoins for Citi business clients
• Strategy buys $147M of BTC, fully rebuys the BTC it sold lower
• NEAR Intents says it turned away $50M in funds from Bitget hack
• Coinbase teases new gacha product, CARDS jumps 25% on speculation of integration

BitcoinBTC · USD

$84,306−2%

24H7D1M1YYTD

Sep 22Sep 24Sep 26Sep 27Sep 29

$87.2k$85.7k$84.2k$82.7k

24h HighHigh$84,275

24h LowLow$82,721

VolVol$1.3B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

→

$50$100$500

Buy

🏦 Citi and Coinbase Just Made Stablecoins Invisible

Big companies that bank with Citi can now let their customers pay in stablecoins. The company never holds a token, never opens a crypto account, and never sees a wallet address. Coinbase turns the stablecoins into dollars behind the scenes, and Citi deposits the money like any other payment.

That’s the whole product, and the point is what’s missing from it. There’s no crypto part for the business to learn.

It works both ways. Companies building on Coinbase can now open accounts that behave like bank accounts, powered by Citi’s banking software. Dollars that come in get turned into stablecoins automatically.

Citi’s customers get paid in stablecoins and receive dollars. Coinbase’s customers get paid in dollars and receive stablecoins. Whoever you bank with, the money arrives in the form you already use, and the conversion happens where you can’t see it.

This is how the technology actually wins, when it’s behind the scenes. Nobody buys a coin. Nobody downloads a wallet. A company adds a payment option, and somewhere in the plumbing a stablecoin moves in seconds instead of a wire taking two days. Coinbase says more than 150 million people worldwide hold stablecoins, and this is a way to accept money from all of them without joining their world. Soon that number will be in the billions…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green up 1-3%; BTC +2% at $84.4k; ETH +3% at $2,730; SOL +1% at $120; HYPE -1% at $88.70; ZEC -8% at $1,450
• Top alt movers include CRV (+20%), AAVE (+16%), ETHFI (+11%) and LINK (+9%)
• Oil -4% at $92; Gold even at $4,185
• Stock futures are slightly green; DOW +0.15%, Nasdaq +0.3%
• Goldman Sachs made its $100 billion Treasury fund available to crypto firms through the Lynq settlement network, without turning it into a token
• NEAR Intents said it turned away more than $50 million in transfers tied to the Bitget hack, froze about $503,000 mid-swap, and waived its 10% cut of Bitget’s recovery bounty
• Chainlink launched CCIP 2.0, letting companies add their own security checks to transfers between blockchains, five months after a rival’s setup lost $292 million because it relied on one checker
• Senate Democrats called Tether a “significant financial lifeline” for Iran in a report led by Richard Blumenthal, finding 84% of 846 sanctioned wallets used USDT; Tether says it helped freeze nearly $550 million in Iran-linked tokens this year
• Apollo’s Torsten Slok warned AI agents could drain bank deposits by automatically moving household cash out of low-interest checking accounts into better-paying alternatives

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $31M in net inflows on Monday; the ETH ETFs saw $17M in inflows and Solana had $8M
• Strategy bought 1,665 Bitcoin for $142.7 million at an average of $85,681, reaching a record 847,666 BTC and fully replacing everything it sold this summer; it also spent $151.7 million buying back STRC
• Strive added 1,107 Bitcoin for $94.5 million, pushing holdings past 27,000 coins to 27,462, worth about $2.3 billion
• Bitmine bought 17,362 ETH for about $47 million, taking its stake to 4.9% of all Ethereum

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were green; DOGE +3%, SHIB +3%, PEPE +2%, PENGU +3%, TRUMP +2%, SPX -1%, BONK +6%
• Robinhood chain leaders were mostly red ahead of today’s RH Summit; Pons -1% to $364M; AI -7% at $208M; Cashcat -8% at $175M; BUN +65% and Shroom +26% led top movers
• Solana top movers were led by Parasite +24x, Sapijiju +20x and Hooked +20x; Ansem -7% to $160M and Cards +23%

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were slightly red; Punks even at 33.69 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.2 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 3.2 ETH
• Identity MD (+23%) and Credits (+10%) led top movers