Stripe Acquires Crypto Wallet Provider Privy

In 2025, every week feels like Stablecoin Week. This one was no exception.

Bank of America confirmed it’s working on a stablecoin. Stripe’s back at it with another stablecoin-flavored acquisition (see below). Shopify is adding USDC checkouts via Base (see below II). And Plasma — one of these brand-new chains built just for stablecoins — hit $1B in liquidity right out of the mainnet gate.

In crypto trading, this is usually the moment you’d start shorting. Peak hype, everyone going bananas. But the beautiful thing about stablecoins? They’re (hopefully) always $1. So yeah — we wouldn’t short it.

Speaking of stablecoins: Catch us next week at Berlin Blockchain Week — we’ll be on stage at Stablecoin Day (Monday) and the Onchain Growth Summit (Tuesday; see here for some free tickets). Come say hi and hear us talk all things stables.

These are the week’s big stories we’re covering today:

• Morpho unveils v2
• Stripe acquires crypto wallet provider Privy
• Coinbase makes big product announcements

MARKET COMMENTARY

Last updated: June 13th, 00:14 a.m. CET

U.S. inflation came in softer than expected this week — normally good news for markets. But investors stayed cautious. Bitcoin fell 2.6% to around $106,000 on Thursday, while Ethereum slid even further, down more than 6%. That’s despite a string of headlines that should’ve supported risk assets: lower inflation, falling bond yields, and signs of progress on crypto regulation in Washington.

So what’s holding markets back? Some analysts point to lingering caution. The expected impact of tariffs on prices hasn’t materialized yet, possibly because companies are drawing down inventories or taking a hit on margins to keep prices stable — a strategy that likely won’t be sustainable. Rising tensions in the Middle East are also adding to the unease.

Now, attention is turning to next week’s Fed meeting. While no rate cuts are expected just yet, investors will be watching the Fed’s updated economic projections closely for clues about the path ahead.

HIGH SIGNAL BITES

• Polymarket partners with X. Although the companies didn’t announce specifics about the partnership, Polymarket predictions will be combined with X data to deliver live insights, with real-time annotations of market moves from Grok and relevant X posts, Polymarket explained in a press release.🤝
• Morpho unveils V2. The new protocol version follows an intent-based architecture and enables peer-to-peer, fixed-rate, and fixed-term loans. Beyond that, the team announced that Morpho Labs will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Morpho Association — a shareholder-free entity — meaning ownership rights will be solely tied to the $MORPHO token.🦋
• Restructuring at Polygon. First, co-founder Sandeep Nailwal is stepping up as the organization’s CEO. In parallel, the team will deprecate its zkEVM and fully focus on its Layer 1 and AggLayer, with the L1 set to prioritize stablecoin payments. Additionally, Polygon has published a roadmap to scale the network to 100,000 transactions per second.🚧
• Bitpanda introduces Vision (VSN) token. Launching on July 16, the new token will power Bitpanda's ecosystem and offer fee rebates, staking rewards, and governance rights within its onchain ecosystem. In addition, the exchange announced the development of Vision Chain — a compliant Layer 2 network for real-world assets (RWAs).🐼

STABLECOINS

Stripe Acquires Crypto Wallet Provider Privy

New acquisition: On Wednesday, payments giant Stripe announced it is acquiring Privy, a leading provider of crypto wallet infrastructure. While financial terms were not disclosed, the deal comes just months after Privy raised a fresh funding round in March 2025.

Why it matters: This marks Stripe’s second acquisition in the stablecoin space, following its $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge in October 2024. While Bridge helps businesses send stablecoins easily, Privy addresses the receiving side: holding and managing digital assets in a compliant, user-friendly way.

• “Money has to reside somewhere, and Privy builds the world’s best programmable vaults,” said Stripe co-founder John Collison. “Alongside our other stablecoin work, we’re looking forward to enabling a new generation of global, internet-native financial services.”

Embedded wallet technology: Founded in 2021, Privy enables developers to embed non-custodial crypto wallets directly into their applications. Instead of redirecting users to external wallet apps like MetaMask, Privy allows them to create and manage wallets using familiar Web2 sign-in methods like email or OAuth — with private keys stored securely in the background.

Stripe x Privy synergies: The acquisition gives Stripe a native wallet layer that could be deployed across its stablecoin, payments, and identity products. In the future:

• Merchants can seamlessly offer crypto wallets to their customers.
• Consumer fintech apps can embed stablecoin wallets directly via Stripe’s APIs, enabling programmable money flows.
• Gig platforms can hold and manage balances for freelancers — without taking on the regulatory burden of becoming a financial institution.

Privy’s traction: According to the company, Privy’s SDK is now used by over 1,000 developer teams and powers more than 75 million wallets. Its breakout moment came in August 2023 through its integration with FriendTech. Since then, Privy has become the go-to embedded wallet stack for crypto-native apps like Farcaster, Hyperliquid, and Blackbird.

Next step: The acquisition is expected to close in the coming weeks. Privy will continue to operate as an independent product.

With Bridge and now Privy, Stripe is assembling the full stack for internet-native money. Bridge handles the money movement, Privy lets apps give each user a self-custodied wallet that feels like a regular Web2 login.

In the future, any platform can offer users a stablecoin balance — without running custody infrastructure and managing blockchain complexity.

For Privy, it’s a smart move. Their SDK already won over the crypto-native crowd, now Stripe will turbocharge their distribution, embedding wallets into the real-world fabric of global commerce.

Karl-Martin Ahrend is a Founding Partner at Areta, a leading crypto-native investment bank offering services in M&A, capital raising, secondaries, and strategic governance. The firm works with entities such as the Arbitrum and Uniswap DAO.

Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge was plug-and-play. Privy is more exploratory, more crypto-native which is a bullish signal for crypto venture.

From our own conversations, it’s clear that many large payment companies have built dedicated internal teams and have been closely tracking the space since the Bridge deal. With Privy now joining Stripe, that quiet observation is turning into real urgency. Yet the pool of viable acquisition targets remains limited — players like BVNK, Conduit, Mesh, or Noah — and ironically, many of them have just raised new rounds, just like Privy.

Maybe that's also why we can already see the ripple effects in venture. More founders are now building for this orchestration layer — especially around FX corridors and cross-border flows. The stack is beginning to take shape.

A WORD FROM TODAY’S SPONSOR

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Exclusive access for free: 5 selected seats are available for free for Blockstories readers. 👉 You can get your ticket via this link.

COMPANY UPDATE

Recap: Coinbase’s Big Announcements from the State of Crypto Summit 2025

Announcement spree: Yesterday, at its State of Crypto Summit 2025 in New York, Coinbase unveiled a wave of new products, partnerships, and integrations — all aimed at further driving business and consumer adoption of crypto and stablecoins.

Shopify integration: First, e-commerce giant Shopify is adding support for USDC payments on Coinbase’s Layer-2 Base, enabling merchants in 34 countries to accept stablecoins at checkout. Early access is available now, with a full rollout taking place over the course of the year.

• Powered by Stripe: “By default, Stripe will allow merchants to receive stablecoin payments in their preferred local currency, to be deposited in their bank account just like any other payment they receive,” Stripe said in its release.

Coinbase Business: To complement its offering, Coinbase introduced “Coinbase Business” — an all-in-one platform for companies looking to integrate crypto into their day-to-day operations. Starting now, businesses with early access can use stablecoins to pay vendors, contractors, and employees, earn yield on idle balances, and connect directly with accounting tools.

New cashback card: For consumers, Coinbase revealed the “Coinbase One Card,” a credit card powered by the American Express network. Its standout feature: up to 4% cashback, paid out in Bitcoin. The card is expected to launch this fall.

DEX integrations: The exchange is also deepening its DeFi footprint. The Coinbase app will soon support native integrations with multiple decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on Base, allowing users to swap assets onchain — without needing a self-custodial wallet. Following the launch of its Bitcoin leding product, this new feature marks another step toward bringing more onchain functionality directly into Coinbase’s retail interface.

Perpetuals trading: Finally, Coinbase announced plans to launch perpetual futures trading in the U.S. While details remain limited, the move follows recent remarks from outgoing CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, who noted that such contracts “could come to market now.”

Two strategic product directions stand out:

1. Crypto as a service: Coinbase is taking the infrastructure it built for itself — custody, stablecoin payments, staking, treasury rails, etc. — and offering it to other institutions and businesses. Think of it as the AWS-to-Amazon playbook, but for digital assets.
2. DeFi mullet: On the consumer side, Coinbase continues to merge centralized with decentralized finance and gives users access to onchain trading, lending, and yield — all without leaving the Coinbase interface.

The big product question for me: With Robinhood doubling down on crypto and Kraken entering the stock game, how long until Coinbase makes its own push into tokenized stock trading?

Turnkey | $30 million | Series B : Infrastructure provider for embedded and programmable crypto wallets.

OneBalance | $25 million | Total Funding : Cross-chain protocol enabling seamless multichain UX.

RISE | $8 million | Total Funding : A high-speed Ethereum L2 that delivers ultra-low latency (5 ms) and high throughput (100k TPS), enabling real-time decentralized apps.

OpenTrade | $7 million | Strategic : Institutional-grade ‘yield-as-a-service’ infrastructure provider, empowering fintechs to embed stablecoin yields into apps via a compliant backend.

nuConstruct | $6 million | Seed : Developer of TOOL, middleware infrastructure designed to improve Ethereum’s transaction speed and privacy without altering the protocol.

Disclaimer: The information provided in the Crypto Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.