Crypto Payments Are Becoming an Infrastructure Business Visa, Circle and Ripple are backing payments infrastructure company Velocity in a funding round that brings its Series A to $48 million at a $200 million valuation. The company is building infrastructure designed to connect stablecoins with existing payment networks. I find the companies involved more interesting than the funding number. Visa represents traditional card payments. Circle represents $USDC and stablecoins. Ripple has spent years working on blockchain-based financial infrastructure. A few years ago, these were often presented as competing models: cards vs. crypto, banks vs. blockchain, traditional payment networks vs. stablecoins. Increasingly, they're starting to look like different layers of the same system. A merchant probably doesn't care whether the customer ultimately funded a purchase with a bank deposit, USDC or something else. They care that they received the correct amount, quickly, cheaply and without taking unnecessary risk. The same applies to consumers. Most people aren't going to choose a coffee shop because its settlement infrastructure uses blockchain. Which makes me think the biggest stablecoin payment companies may not necessarily be the ones that convince everyone to “pay with crypto.” They may be the ones that make the crypto part almost impossible to notice. #Macro Insights# #Altcoin Season#