Demex Daily #141: Stripe Reintroduces Crypto Payments with USDC

What’s Interesting Today:

Stripe has reentered the cryptocurrency space, announcing that it will enable merchants to receive payments in USD Coin (USDC) on the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon networks starting this summer. This move comes after Stripe initially accepted Bitcoin payments in 2014 but ceased this service in 2018 due to high costs. The reintroduction of crypto services includes supporting transactions in the stablecoin USDC, which will be automatically converted into fiat for merchants. This initiative aims to facilitate global transactions, especially for customers without traditional banking access, and signals Stripe's renewed optimism in the potential of cryptocurrencies.

Avail, a blockchain company focused on enhancing Web3 scalability, has partnered with leading layer-2 networks including Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare, and zkSync. This collaboration aims to utilize Avail’s data availability layer and unification architecture to create more scalable and cost-efficient blockchain chains. The initiative addresses one of the industry's main challenges—limited data availability—which impedes scaling and mainstream adoption. Avail's strategy involves providing a base layer that supports any blockchain, thus facilitating a more interconnected and user-friendly blockchain ecosystem. This move aligns with Avail's goal to become a rollup-agnostic platform and follows a recent airdrop of 600 million AVAIL tokens.