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Talkchain

Wall Street is talking a lot more about stablecoins

The steady creep of crypto closer to the traditional financial sector is a key theme of the markets this year.

7/16/25 11:23AM

Stablecoins — crypto assets typically pegged to the US dollar and supposedly backed by ample, easy to sell, super safe securities like US Treasurys — are thought to be the most boring corner of the crypto market. By design, they don’t offer the wild, potentially lucrative swings that have enticed crypto traders in recent years.

But try telling that to investors of Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin, USDC. Since the company started trading publicly in early June, it’s up over 600%. Coinbase, which co-launched USDC with Circle through the Centre Consortium and is a major player in increasing its adoption, is up more than 50% this year and just touched a new high.

In part, that’s because stablecoins’ status as the seemingly safest part of the crypto-verse has put the dollar substitutes at the bleeding edge of a key theme powering market momentum this year: steadily increasing connections between crypto and the traditional, regulated US financial system.

That fusion has gathered pace since President Trump’s second administration began. The White House has publicly embraced crypto and pushed to ease regulations on an industry that — as should be noted — has directly and personally enriched the sitting president and his family. (One estimate said that for the year through April, the Trump family and its business partners had made some $350 million in fees on its $TRUMP coin.)

But pro-crypto pressure is also coming from the legislative branch, where crypto has emerged as a key source of political donations over the last couple years. The bipartisan GENIUS Act — which would set the rules of the road for stablecoins — passed the Senate in June. And while it still faces hurdles in the House, the writing seems to be on the wall that stablecoins, in some incarnation, will be connected to the US banking system in the not too distant future.

Case in point: stablecoin-related chatter from S&P 500 companies is picking up steam as we head into the heart of earnings season, especially from the big Wall Street banks that reported this week.

Even before that, the appearance of the term in conference call transcripts surged to a new high in June, FactSet data shows, which doesn’t even count this week’s comments from the big US banks. At last glance, financial titans talking stablecoins included Mastercard, BlackRock, Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

For the record, many of the bankers have merely acknowledged developments on the stablecoin regulation front, telling analysts that they’re “following closely” or some such pabulum.

But the uptick in chatter is often triggered by questions from analysts, who are likely interested to know if some of the stablecoin fairy dust that supercharged Circle shares could rub off on the old-school banks they cover. That suggests there’s a lot more stablecoin talk to come.

Tasha Matsumoto

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Stocks continue to climb as surprise drop in private payrolls solidifies rate cut expectations

Despite a lackluster performance in many megacap tech names, all major US indexes climbed higher Wednesday.

CHICAGO, IL - MARCH 05: Benny, the mascot for the Chicago Bulls entertains during a break between the Bulls and the Boston Celtics at the United Center on March 5, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips14h

Seagate, Western Digital stumble amid reports of customer resistance to AI

Hard disk drive makers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital slumped Wednesday following a report from The Information that Microsoft is facing pushback from software clients who don’t want to pay more for AI-optimized products.

Microsoft contested the report, issuing a statement saying it hadn’t lowered sales quotas or targets. But the story hit squarely on the core issue facing the market right now: whether AI will ever produce enough revenue to pay for the massive investments hyperscalers are making.

As the tumble for hard disk makers shows, this is a market-wide issue. Share prices of hard disk makers have boomed amid expectations that the soaring demand for data storage related to AI investment will juice sales of these cheap storage devices for the foreseeable future.

Seagate and Western Digital are still the second- and third-best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year, with gains of roughly 200% and 250%, respectively.

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Micron announces exit from consumer business to focus on AI demand

With a lot of AI mouths to feed amid a supply crunch for memory chips, Micron has made the decision to exit its consumer chip business (which goes by the brand name “Crucial”).

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,” said Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer.

Memory chip prices have been surging thanks to demand from the AI boom, with South Korean memory giant SK Hynix saying that it’s already sold out all of next year’s production.

Per the press release, Micron will cease shipments of Crucial-branded items at the end of February 2026.

The product line has been a bit of a misnomer for the memory chip specialist as of late. Sales of Crucial-branded products fall under its mobile and client business unit, and the brand enjoyed a 25% jump in revenues year on year as of its most recent quarter. While impressive growth, that pales in comparison to the more than 200% surge in revenues for its cloud memory business unit, which focuses on high-bandwidth memory chip sales to hyperscalers.

Operating margins in the mobile and client business unit were 29% in its most recent quarter, compared to 48% for the cloud-centric division.

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Boeing falls as FTC requires it to divest Spirit AeroSystems assets to complete its $8.3 billion merger

The FTC said on Wednesday that the $8.3 billion merger between Boeing and its key supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, cannot proceed unless Boeing significantly divests Spirit assets.

Boeing shares fell more than 2% on the FTC’s proposed order, which said that Boeing should divest Spirit businesses that supply aerostructures (wings, doors, etc.) to rival Airbus. The assets, including personnel, will be divested to Airbus, the FTC statement said.

The moves would resolve antitrust allegations that Boeing’s acquisition of Spirit — which was spun out of Boeing in 2005 — would allow the plane maker to raise costs on Airbus or degrade its access to certain necessary parts. Boeing, the FTC alleged, could also have the ability to see sensitive information about its competitors.

The public now has 30 days to submit comments on the proposed order.

FTC Requires Boeing to Divest Several Spirit Assets to Proceed with Merger

The public now has 30 days to submit comments on the proposed order.

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D-Wave Quantum rises as Evercore ISI initiates with “outperform” rating, calling it a “leading play” in industry

D-Wave Quantum is up big on Wednesday after Evercore ISI initiated coverage on the annealing quantum specialist with an “outperform” rating and price target of $44, implying upside of nearly 96% from where the stock closed on Tuesday.

Analyst Mark Lipacis called it a “leading play as the computing industry sees its next Tectonic Shift to a Quantum Computing Era,” highlighting three key things the firm offers to investors:

First quantum company with commercial revenues;
It’s a full-stack play, with services, software, and hardware;
And the ample cash hoard to develop its technology and potentially pursue M&A opportunities.

After its Q3 earnings report, CEO Dr. Alan Baratz told us that bolstering the firm’s gate model system (as opposed to its annealing system, which is its strength) was a priority.

“With the roughly $830 million in the bank, we have the resources to be able to invest more in that program, both internal investment and through acquisition,” he said. “We have one customer who has said, when you have a gate model system, I want it. So it expands our TAM [total addressable market], and it allows us to further grow our revenue.”

While commercial opportunities for publicly traded quantum computing companies have been relatively limited to date, particularly outside of D-Wave, Evercore’s Lipacis argues it’s not too early to invest in the industry.

“Each successive Tectonic Shift in Computing surprised investors with new workloads, and created stock performance of 100x-to-1,000x for full-stack ecosystem leaders,” he wrote. “To be clear, with over 40 quantum companies competing and no clear-cut leaders, we expect a shakeout, but to capture full-alpha, history shows you need to get in 10-years before the Tectonic Shift actually happens.”

He thinks that D-Wave will capture 12% of a quantum computing market that BCG estimates will be between $15 billion to $30 billion by 2035.