🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Stripe’s valuation goes beyond crypto hype

• Crypto work matters, yet the valuation jump tracks rapid growth in Stripe’s core payments business.
• Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, up 34% year over year, while staying “robustly profitable” 1.
• That amount equals about 1.6% of the world’s GDP 1.
• Its Revenue suite, including Billing, Invoicing, and Tax, is trending toward a $1 billion annual run rate this year 1.
• Stripe says its products run money movement for many large firms, including 90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 80% of the Nasdaq 100 1.

Stripe is building an end-to-end stablecoin and payments stack

• The plan spans wallets plus stablecoins plus payment rails, not only crypto acceptance.
• Stripe unveiled Tempo, a blockchain built for payments. It targets stablecoin transfers with dedicated payment lanes plus sub-second finality 1.
• Acquisitions of crypto wallet service Privy and stablecoin platform Bridge add more building blocks to Stripe’s crypto stack 1.
• This setup supports agentic commerce (AI software agents that can transact on a user’s behalf). It also supports stablecoin-based business-to-business (B2B) payments. Stripe says stablecoin payments volume doubled in 2025 to around $400 billion, with about 60% estimated to be B2B 1.
• The push may heat up rivalry with banks plus public blockchains as Stripe expands its stablecoin and payments infrastructure.