Soonsal Crypto
Wall Street's biggest bank enters full-service crypto. Jack Dorsey fires 4,000 people and blames AI. MetaMask turns your wallet into a bank account. Regulators try to kill stablecoin yield. Another Ponzi bites the dust.
Morgan Stanley announced Bitcoin custody, spot trading, and yield lending for clients — making it the first major Wall Street investment bank to offer full-service crypto.
This is a firm managing $1.5 trillion in global assets. The same bank that spent years calling crypto "speculation" is now rushing in because clients won't stop asking. (When they say "reluctantly," they mean "we wanted to be first.")
Ted Pick took over as CEO in early 2024 and flipped Morgan Stanley's crypto stance on day one. His predecessor James Gorman was openly skeptical. Pick, a 30-year trading veteran, read the market — and his clients — faster. His line: "Our job is to give clients what they want." (Translation: "The money's here, let's not be the last ones in.")
Block (formerly Square) slashed more than 40% of its workforce — over 4,000 people — dropping from 10,000+ to under 6,000. Severance: 20 weeks of base pay. Cost: $450M–$500M hitting Q1.
The market's response? Block stock surged 24% after hours. The "layoffs = stock rally" playbook apparently works for crypto companies too.
Co-founded Twitter. CEO'd twice. Ousted twice. Built Square, rebranded it Block, went full Bitcoin maximalist: "Bitcoin is the only real money. Everything else is noise." Baked BTC into Cash App. Split with Elon Musk. Started backing Bluesky. (Only Dorsey could create Twitter, abandon Twitter, and then build Twitter's competitor.)
His quote on the layoffs: "Within a year, most companies will reach the same conclusion." This is the first major public case of a crypto-AI hybrid company rebuilding its entire workforce around automation. Expect the ripple effects to be massive.
MetaMask launched a crypto debit card across the entire US — Mastercard network, real-time conversion, any merchant. The world's largest crypto wallet (30M+ monthly users) just gave its users a way to spend directly from self-custody.
Coinbase Card and Crypto.com Visa exist, but MetaMask is a pure wallet — no exchange, no centralized order book. How it handles user data versus legacy card issuers will define whether "decentralized payments" actually means anything.
The OCC and fellow regulators want to ban stablecoin issuers from paying interest to holders. The argument: stablecoins should behave like non-interest-bearing demand deposits.
Right now, USDC and USDT invest reserves in Treasuries but keep the yield. DeFi protocols, meanwhile, pay 3–8% APY on stablecoin deposits. Regulators are targeting that gap — and the banking lobby's fingerprints are all over it.
The irony: on the same day, JPMorgan published research saying a crypto market structure bill would boost prices. Block with one hand, build with the other. Peak cognitive dissonance.
Goliath Ventures CEO arrested for a $328M crypto Ponzi scheme. The pitch: "AI-powered trading with guaranteed returns." The reality: new money paying old money. Classic.
Separately, US senators flagged that Sam Bankman-Fried attempted to lobby from prison in support of crypto legislation. Senators responded: "A convicted fraudster should not be influencing crypto legislation."
FTX founder. Once worth $26 billion. Called "crypto's Warren Buffett." Championed Effective Altruism while funding massive DC lobbying. Then FTX imploded in 2022, vaporizing billions in customer assets. Sentenced to 25 years in 2024. Apparently still working the phones from behind bars. (The audacity is remarkable — but that's always been the SBF character.)
Crypto fraud losses topped $800M in ransomware alone in 2025. Every one of these stories is a reminder: without credible trust infrastructure, institutional capital at real scale remains a distant prospect.
Soonsal Crypto