Bitcoin was up 2.6% this week to a market capitalization of $1.56T.

Early Riders Media

This week’s podcast covered the landmark launch of Onramp Finance, the $293 million KelpDAO hack and $9 billion in Aave outflows, TradFi’s accelerating Bitcoin build-out from Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, and Kraken’s updated IPO filing revising down to a lower valuation.

You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

Industry & Institutional Updates

Onramp launched Onramp Finance, a unified money platform combining its superior custody solution (MIC), rewards cash that earns up to 5%, direct gold access, and a spendable Visa card.
U.S. Bitcoin ETFs drew more than $2 billion in net inflows over an eight-day streak, reinforcing ETFs as a primary institutional demand channel for bitcoin exposure.
Strategy purchased 34,164 Bitcoin for $2.54 billion in its largest single-day acquisition, lifting total holdings to 815,061 BTC and surpassing BlackRock’s position.
Metaplanet issued ¥8 billion, or roughly $50 million, in zero-interest bonds to purchase additional bitcoin, extending its capital markets-driven treasury strategy.
Kalshi reportedly plans to launch crypto perpetual futures trading, positioning the prediction market platform to compete more directly with exchanges like Binance and Hyperliquid.
Ramp rolled out zero-fee conversions between USDT and dollars across its product suite, reducing friction between stablecoins and traditional banking rails.
KelpDAO suffered a $293 million hack, triggering almost $9 billion in outflows from Aave after attackers deposited stolen tokens as collateral on the lending platform.
Tether froze $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses in coordination with U.S. authorities, one of the stablecoin issuer’s largest compliance actions on record.
Fold launched a Bitcoin Bonus Program for employers, with Steak ‘n Shake as its flagship partner offering bitcoin rewards to over 10,000 hourly workers.
Coinbase launched USDC loans in the UK, allowing users to borrow against BTC, ETH, or cbETH in under a minute.
Stripe’s Tempo blockchain launched a stablecoin advisory program, adding DoorDash, Visa, Fifth Third Bank, and Howard Hughes Holdings as payment partners to bring more business payments onchain.

Regulatory & Sovereign Updates

U.S. Military Officials disclosed that the military is running a live Bitcoin node for network security testing, framing the protocol as a cybersecurity and power projection tool in strategic competition with China.
The U.S. government transferred 8.2 BTC tied to the $9 billion Bitfinex hack to Coinbase Prime, signaling a potential sale from its $7.2 billion in bitcoin that it seized during the operation.
Russia’s State Duma advanced a crypto regulation bill through its first reading, moving toward a framework that would designate the Bank of Russia as the sector’s regulator and permit crypto use in foreign trade settlements.
French Finance Minister Roland Lescure urged European banks to expand euro-pegged stablecoins and tokenized deposits, citing the narrow euro stablecoin market relative to the $300 billion USD-pegged market.
Russia passed a sweeping crypto regulation bill classifying digital assets as property and creating a legal framework for using cryptocurrency in foreign trade to circumvent Western sanctions.

What We're Watching: Onramp's Finance Launch

Onramp’s biggest product launch to date reframes what a Bitcoin-native firm can be. Where most Bitcoin companies do one or two things well, Onramp Finance consolidates cash management, bitcoin brokerage, rewards, spending, institutional-grade custody, and digital asset research into one singular money platform.

The Product

Onramp Finance organizes around four key functions. Earn: cash management accounts offering up to 5% in Onramp-funded rewards, powered by Bridge and Stripe, available to active clients executing at least one BTC trade per month. Accumulate: lowest-fee bitcoin buying with automatic transfers into Multi-Institution Custody vaults with Lloyd’s of London insurance and direct gold ownership. Spend: an Onramp Visa card issued by Lead Bank returning up to 1.5% cash back, that can be easily swept into bitcoin. Research: the revamped Onramp Terminal with 1,000+ dashboards is free at every account tier. Pricing tiers run from Finance (free) to Core ($250/month) to Private (0.04%/month), with IRA accounts and BTC-backed loans up to 50% LTV available across tiers.

Why Now

The Onramp team cited three key unlocks. The GENIUS Act made stablecoin cash rails commercially viable, enabling the dollar-yield product at the platform’s core. Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge provided the cash and card infrastructure needed to enable Onramp's cash-bearing rewards program. Lastly, Onramp’s Multi-Institution Custody foundation, which has been operational since 2023, gave the company a compliant and institutional-grade foundation to build additional financial services on top. CEO Michael Tanguma frames the combined offering as “dollars next to bitcoin in one unified experience."

Strategic Read

Onramp’s thesis inverts the standard fintech playbook. Most competitors and incumbents are bolting custody onto financial services; Onramp is bolting financial services onto institutional-grade custody. The foundation is the hard part and everyone else is still figuring it out. The Genesis Program underscores the go-to-market posture: 210 founding members, permanent perks, and direct CEO access for 90 days. Onramp's go-to-market is a high-touch acquisition strategy aimed primarily at HNW allocators and institutions who have been waiting for someone to put it all in one place.

Chart of the Week

Since 2000, the prices of essentials like hospital services, college tuition, medical care, housing, and food have significantly outpaced the CPI, while discretionary goods like new cars and clothing have remained comparatively flat. The services and assets that households actually need most, are experiencing the most disparate impact from fiat debasement. Additionally, medical care, college tuition, and hospital services have all significantly outpaced hourly wage growth, at just 124%.

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Early Riders | Open Range Weekly | 04.26.26