Rika

Many people misunderstand the crypto neobank category. What they see is a crypto card that can be used for everyday spending. But the viability of the business is not determined by the card itself. It is determined by the settlement layer underneath. In terms of payment experience alone, traditional cards still have the advantage. Visa and Mastercard have spent decades building merchant networks, fraud protection systems, and payment processor relationships that new entrants cannot quickly replicate. What truly differentiates crypto neobanks is stablecoins. Traditional payments involve multiple stages, including authorization, clearing, funding, and settlement. They also depend on banking hours and pre-funded accounts. Stablecoins allow issuers to move funds 24/7, reconcile balances faster, and reduce the amount of capital sitting idle between settlement cycles. Observable onchain crypto card volume has now reached $10.04 billion, with five distinct categories emerging: - Full-stack issuers such as Rain - Exchange-backed cards from Coinbase and Bybit - DeFi-native cards from Etherfi and MetaMask - Stablecoin-native neobanks such as Plasma and RedotPay - Remittance-focused products such as Felix Pago Each company is building a different moat. Rain provides issuance infrastructure to multiple crypto applications. Coinbase uses its existing users, custody services, and fiat rails to expand into everyday spending. RedotPay targets emerging markets where banking infrastructure remains weak, addressing demand for dollar access and cross-border money movement. However, Visa and Mastercard are also expanding into the stablecoin settlement layer. Stablecoins may become part of the financial infrastructure of the future, but that does not mean stablecoin-native companies will necessarily capture most of the value. Many crypto neobanks will likely disappear. The survivors will be those that either control distribution or solve regional problems that traditional banks continue to overlook. The card was never the moat. The company that controls the settlement layer underneath is more likely to win.

RWA is one of the few sectors that has continued to grow this year. The on-chain RWA market is currently around $32B, up roughly 300% over the past year. More importantly, much of this growth took place during one of the weakest periods in the crypto market. This suggests that RWA demand may not be driven purely by market sentiment. The more important question is where that demand is coming from. Rather than looking at RWA as a single category, it may be more useful to view it as a set of financial access experiments: Tokenized funds are testing institutional-grade on-chain allocation. Tokenized commodities are testing whether assets like gold can move more efficiently through crypto rails. Tokenized equities are testing whether global users can access stock-linked exposure with fewer constraints than traditional brokerage systems. Among these, tokenized equities remain early, but they may become one of the more user-facing RWA applications. For many users outside the US, access to US equities is still shaped by local brokerage availability, account approval, funding rails, trading hours, and regional restrictions. Tokenized equities attempt to create a new access layer through crypto-native infrastructure. The key variables to monitor are: → Asset backing → Issuer transparency → Liquidity depth → Regulatory structure → User accessibility RWA should not be evaluated only as a crypto narrative. It is also a distribution problem: how real-world financial assets can become easier to access, trade, and integrate with on-chain products. If infrastructure and compliance continue to mature, tokenized equities could become one of the clearest bridges between traditional markets and on-chain finance.

Influencer marketing is here to stay. Here are 5 reasons why ↓ - It is no longer a one-time test; it is part of the main strategy. - Good KOLs bring real trust and attention that standard ads just cannot buy. - A great influencer keeps driving results throughout a campaign, not just on day one. - Smart teams combine influencers with Google search, paid ads, and news articles. - It is shifting from a quick shoutout to a permanent way to get real users. Influencer marketing still matters, but the strongest teams are no longer using it alone