Canada launches a CAD-backed stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana rails, as Coinbase stumbles on earnings
A Digital Asset News solo commentary on Canada's new regulated stablecoin, Coinbase's Q1 miss, Elizabeth Warren's letter to Meta, and World Liberty Financial's legal troubles.
Summary
The host of Digital Asset News covers several converging stories in the stablecoin and crypto space. The lead story is the launch of Canada's first regulated digital dollar — a CAD-backed stablecoin — which has chosen Base (Coinbase's L2), Ethereum, and Solana as its primary blockchain rails, with payments-focused blockchain Tempo as an additional integration partner for CAD workflows. This reinforces the host's long-standing thesis that payments are the killer app for crypto. Coinbase is under pressure after missing Q1 earnings estimates and suffering a multi-hour outage blamed on Amazon Web Services, compounding criticism following a 14% staff reduction. Senator Elizabeth Warren has written to Mark Zuckerberg pressing Meta on its reported stablecoin plans, while World Liberty Financial — the Trump family-affiliated crypto platform — faces legal and reputational turbulence stemming from a lawsuit by Tron founder Justin Sun. The episode closes with data showing stablecoin card spending grew 105% year-over-year, and a clip of Tom Lee — associated with both Fundstrat and Bitmine's ETH accumulation strategy — making bold ETH and BTC price predictions for 2026.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
AI Voice Cloning Scams — A Public Service Announcement
Host: Well, it looks like the Canadian dollar is going to be competing with US stablecoins. I call it the Canuck Buck. And there's no better time to get into that. But before we get into those top stories — how stablecoins are moving, and how Canada has actually chosen Ethereum and Solana to run these rails on — I just want to do a quick public service announcement.
As AI starts to flourish and we see more and more use cases, unfortunately scammers are going to use it to their advantage. I saw this from Felipe — it's in French, so I'm not going to play it, as I don't think many of my audience speaks French. But essentially what is going on is this, and this has happened to me multiple times. You receive a call, you pick it up, and you say, "Hello, who is this?" "Hello, can you hear me?" And you hang up. In that short amount of time, AI uses your voice. They clone it. They find out who your people are in your circle, and they call those people and try to extort thousands of dollars, millions of dollars — whatever those people actually have. This is just another social engineering scam, but it's becoming more and more sophisticated.
I know right now you're probably thinking, "I would never fall for that because I'm not dumb." However, there are a lot of factors that go into all these things. Maybe you had a bad day. Maybe you're very sleepy. Maybe you're sick. Maybe you just got out of the hospital. Maybe you're getting old and you forget things — like myself. All these things are happening. So just be aware of what is going on.
I cannot mention this enough: please, it's not just about putting crypto into a cold storage device, because you can actually take that out pretty quickly. It's not about leaving it on exchanges, because they can actually hack those as well. It's about having a layer between you and these scammers. And maybe not just you, but the people that you orange-pilled and got into Bitcoin and digital assets — we have to protect them, because if they go, then everything else goes.
Canada's CAD Stablecoin — The Canuck Buck
Host: On to the story — the Canuck Buck. I didn't really see this coming as far as stablecoins go, and it makes a lot of sense. Different nations are going to do different things with different stablecoins. If you're new to the channel, my whole thesis is that payments are the killer app for crypto. That could be payments from person to person, person to AI, AI to AI — doesn't matter. I think stablecoins are going to do a heck of a lot of volume. We'll see where it all comes through.
So it makes sense that Canada would say, "Hey, we don't want to use the US dollar. Let's use the CAD, the Canadian dollar." And sure enough — shout out to Ben's Chair for bringing this to me last night — this is actually pretty good. The first regulated Canadian digital dollar is here and ready to compete with the US market. But it's not so much about that. It's about what they chose as far as the rails.
A fiat-backed stablecoin like CAD is a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value relative to the Canadian dollar. The reason it maintains stability is because it is backed one-to-one with the Canadian dollar. When we get to the story about Elizabeth Warren — everybody's favorite crypto-carin — she put out a letter to Mark Zuckerberg because Meta is going to get into the stablecoin business. When she talks about instability, I'd ask: what would you rather have? Something backed one-to-one with the dollar, with the Canadian dollar, with the euro, with the renminbi, or whatever you've got? Or would you leave it up to the banks and go, "Hey, fractional reserve lending — we'll get it to you at some point, not today, but we can give you your cash at some point. Just don't do it today." Something like this, one-to-one, there's no more run on the banks. This is great.
So the CAD stablecoin is pegged one-to-one, and any one CAD token is intended to be redeemed for exactly one Canadian dollar. My personal opinion is it's a better version of what we have right now with the banks.
There is no dedicated federal law specifically for stablecoins yet in Canada. However — and I did not know this, I'm not Canadian, so if you're from Canada, tell me where I'm wrong — while the Stablecoin Act was passed two months ago in Canada, it won't go into effect until 2027. Quite interesting.
Here are the rails they chose: Base, Ethereum, Tempo, and Solana. Currently, Lavel — which is the market dynamics company rolling this stablecoin out — says the company uses Base, which is Coinbase's L2, for transaction volume because of its ability to handle large volumes. Ethereum, they state, is the book of record at the institutional level and an obvious choice for big institutions. The company is also working with payments-first blockchain Tempo to integrate CAD into workflows. And Lavel also said Solana will be the next natural expansion, as it's known for its extreme speed and is frequently used by global payment processors.
So congratulations, Canada, for getting into the fray. We'll see where it all goes, but this is actually a good thing for stablecoins and the thesis that payments will be the killer app.
Coinbase Misses Q1 Earnings and Suffers a Major Outage
Host: Now let's get into Coinbase. I can't stress this enough — to use a hockey analogy, which Canada seems to love — it's not where the hockey puck is, it's where it's going. You skate to where the puck is going. Even though Coinbase just didn't hit their earnings call and they went down, that doesn't mean that's where they're going to stay forever. I would argue that Coinbase is going to do quite well globally over the next year, three years, ten years, and twenty.
Coinbase stock declined 5% after missing Q1 estimates on a crypto slowdown. Revenue came in at $1.4 billion — roughly about $10–11 million below Wall Street's estimations. Transaction revenue totaled $755 million. And of course, why would there be a lot of transaction revenue? We're in a bear market. People aren't buying as much. They aren't selling as much. They've already sold or they're holding on for dear life. This missed analyst expectations of $805 million. Subscription and service revenue — a segment investors closely watch as Coinbase tries to reduce its reliance on trading fees — totaled $583 million. One of their services is Coinbase One, where you pay so much per month and get a reduction in your fees. They were trying to play both sides. It just didn't really work out. This came in below expectations of $619.3 million.
Right now, of course, people are dumping on Coinbase. But two things. First of all, it did go down quite a bit this week. It was at $207. Somebody knew something on May 4th. By May 6th it was around almost $200, and it dropped down to around $180 — quite a bit of a drop in a day. But over the last 24 hours it has rebounded, because people realize it doesn't matter what people talk about in an earnings call right now. It's where that puck is going to be. Coinbase is going to be just fine.
However, they did do a little faux pas where they unfortunately laid off 14% of their staff. They said, "We don't need as many developers as we possibly could — we'll just lay those guys off and use AI." And because of that, there was a big outage yesterday for Coinbase. Some say it was five hours, some say it was eight hours. But Coinbase says it wasn't them — it was Amazon.
Here's what they say: Coinbase blames Amazon Web Services for a hours-long crypto trading outage. The company said its systems are built to withstand a single-zone outage, but they were overwhelmed by failures across several AWS zones, promising a brief shift to cancel-only trading before full service was restored. This comes as Coinbase faces weaker-than-expected first quarter results and a 14% workforce reduction, drawing fresh criticism over its technical resilience.
Look, I've been in crypto since 2017. Coinbase was my first centralized exchange. They have never fixed this. It doesn't matter how many people they have. For some reason, they just can't figure out how to stop these outages. I mean, they've been in business for over a decade. Or maybe — and I've always noticed this — it seems like when Bitcoin goes up magnificently or goes down really sharply, all of a sudden Coinbase goes down. It's amazing. Maybe a billion-dollar company can figure that out. We'll see. Let me know what you think about that in the comments.
Elizabeth Warren Presses Meta on Stablecoin Plans
Host: Let's shift gears from centralized exchanges to a little bit of politics and the crypto-wardens of the world. Senator Elizabeth Warren presses Meta over stablecoin trial ahead of rollout plans. I didn't realize that Meta was going to do this — what was called the Facebook stablecoin project.
Here's what we have. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg seeking details on reported stablecoin integration across Meta's 3.5 billion user platform. The letter warned that any attempt to control, influence, or preference a stablecoin on Meta's platform could have implications for competition, privacy, payment system integrity, and financial stability. According to Warren, a successful implementation of Meta's Libra project could have enabled the company to harvest transaction data for its advertising business and operate effectively as a private central bank.
Two things. First of all, every single company tracks you. Have you ever noticed that when you start talking about a specific product, all of a sudden it comes up in your feed? Whether that be YouTube, X, Instagram, or Facebook — they're all listening to you. And especially if you have an Echo Dot from Amazon, do me a favor tonight: talk about a product, then go to Amazon and see if it doesn't pop up in your feed. So this type of concern from Warren — I get it. She's trying to protect everybody, whatever.
And then as far as a private central bank — if it's one-to-one backed, I have no problems. The letter also raises the concern that in the event of a run on the currency, taxpayers would likely be asked to back up the system, similar to risks seen in other private stablecoin arrangements. Again, banks are the ones where we have a real risk of a run. But as far as stablecoins, if they're backed one-to-one, I'm good with it.
World Liberty Financial's Legal Troubles and Ownership Structure
Host: Also speaking of more politics, more stablecoins, and more risky behavior — it looks like World Liberty Financial might be collapsing. Donald Trump Jr. denies rumors that World Liberty is falling apart. I had such big hopes for these guys, but they totally screwed up.
The crypto platform tied to the Trump family is unraveling amid a growing legal battle with Tron founder Justin Sun. If you don't know, he was a massive contributor to World Liberty Financial. He was one of the insiders for Trump Coin, and because of that he was given insider access. Unfortunately, his wallet was frozen and he couldn't get the funds out of whatever he put in, so he sued World Liberty Financial. That court case is going on right now in Florida. Because of that, people are saying there's an unraveling. However, Donald Trump Jr. says just because they say it doesn't mean it's true. Narratives get created, they're driven, and they're bot-farm raised.
One of the things he points to is that because they changed the website and took off his and Eric's picture from the team page, people are saying the Trump family is stepping away. I will say this — I went to the website itself, worldlibertyfinancial.com, and took a look around. I couldn't find anything about the team, but I did find this little juicy tidbit.
DT DT Marks Defi LLC, an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members — Eric and Don Jr. — own approximately 38% of the equity interest in World Liberty Financial HoldCo LLC, which holds the only membership interest in World Liberty Financial, a Florida LLC and developer of the World Liberty Financial Protocol, and operates the WLFI governance platform. Essentially, they own it. WLFI HoldCo holds all of the rights to net protocol revenues other than net proceeds from the sale of WLFI tokens pursuant to the terms of agreement with World Liberty Financial LLC. DT DT Marks Defi LLC, the entity affiliated with President Trump along with certain family members — Eric and Don Jr. — also hold 22.5 billion World Liberty tokens. And DT DT Marks Defi is entitled to receive fees from World Liberty Financial pursuant to a service agreement equal to 75% of World Liberty Financial token sale proceeds after the deduction of agreed reserves, expenses, and other amounts.
So if they are distancing themselves, that's not a really good idea — specifically because they are making so much money. However, with the different court cases being brought against it, who knows what will happen. But if you had any doubts about who owns World Liberty Financial, there you go.
Stablecoin Card Spending Grows 105% Year-Over-Year
Host: To finish up — this is pretty good. Stablecoin card spending is growing 100% year-over-year. This is coming out of the Coindesk Consensus conference. Rain is using partnerships with networks like Mastercard to enable stablecoin spend. Retail stablecoin card spend grew about 105%. Cards are physical or virtual, allowing users to spend stablecoins such as Tether and USDC directly from a digital wallet. Rain provides stablecoin infrastructure and became a Mastercard principal member. Things are moving pretty fast with the traditional systems — Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal — they're all getting in there.
But take it with a grain of salt, because these stablecoin virtual or real cards, despite their growth, represent less than 1% of global card spend. But here's the thing — even though it's 1% now, look to where the hockey puck is going.
Rain says stablecoin settlement lets card programs settle on weekends and holidays, reducing trapped capital by more than 40%. If you have more funds to do more things with, you can get more yield, you can do more things, you can be more flexible. That's a big win-win for the issuer. Traditional card programs often need to pre-fund network obligations or borrow from other networks when banking rails are closed. Stablecoins can move outside bank cut-off times, which is why I think they're going to be blockbuster. That can make rewards and card economics more flexible. Capital that would otherwise sit idle can be used elsewhere in the business.
To make this very simple — two people have to win. It's the one who issues the card and the one who actually uses the card. That's us. The issuers slash costs, free up millions in capital, have less trapped settlement, get higher profits, and can move more funds. And for the user, they should get discounts on purchases, perks, rewards, and cheaper fees from the savings. That's how it all wins. And that's how you beat the banks.
Tom Lee's ETH and BTC Price Predictions
Host: Lastly, Tom Lee from Bitmine — they just reached their 5% Ether accumulation goal. It's going to happen within the next six weeks. Congratulations to Tom Lee and Bitmine. It looks like they just acquired 100,000 ETH per week and they're going to hit their 5% goal within six weeks. That's great for Bitmine.
But I'd like to remind you that Tom Lee is a very smart guy. I like him. He's very entertaining, great head of hair — but man, these price predictions are awful. Take a listen to this.
Tom Lee: "Bitcoin's price end of 2026 — I think it's well past all-time highs. So I think somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000."
"Ethereum price end of 2026 — even better. So I think Ethereum — because I do think the crypto winter's over — somewhere between maybe $9,000 to $12,000."
Host: And you heard it right there. I love price predictions because they're always so accurate.
Live Q&A — Viewer Comments and Discussion
Host: All right, let's get into the Q&A. First of all, before we go, I had to do some more setting arrangements for the echo that's been going on with the video. Did anybody hear any echo on that last video? And if you didn't hear any echo, at the very last ten seconds or so, did you hear the whole thing of what he said or did it cut out? I did another change on that.
Whoever believes Tom's price predictions — I've got to tell you, that guy was doing pretty good for so long and then he makes mistakes. The mistakes of price predictions are this: if you make a prediction, give a range. I'm undefeated on price predictions. Nobody has beaten me so far. Here's an example. Tom said Bitcoin will be between $9,000 and $12,000 by the end of the year. That's pretty close to what you should do — give a range. But I say it'll be somewhere between $5 and $260,000. If you do that, you're usually pretty good. Or if you say Ethereum will be between $9,000 and $12,000 — that's a good start, but don't give a time frame. And if you do give a time frame, give something like ten years. Then everybody's like, "Oh, I've got time." So Tom makes the cardinal sin of giving a price prediction with a time frame. I don't know why he does that — unless he's just a super genius because everybody talks about it.
He's trying to pump his bags. Well, that's also true, but we're all doing the same thing, right? I mean, I don't talk about Bitcoin out of the goodness of my heart. I talk about it because I own it. I don't talk about Solana, Ethereum, and Tron just because it's good technology — I believe in it, but it's also because I own it. There are some things I don't own that I still talk about, like Chainlink — great project. I talked about Polygon. I don't have any of that anymore. Maybe a little bit. But we're all doing the same thing. I'm just trying to be more transparent.
Crant said, "I sort of got stung by World Liberty Financial. Sold 50K, still hold 50K. We'll see." You would think that when a sitting president of the United States gets into a company, that company would do really well and take off, because they have everybody behind it — they have the power of the US government essentially. But man, did they mess up in the execution, how they rolled it out, the insider trading — it's just a disease that needs to be eradicated.
Unreal says, "Why is everyone sleeping on tokenized deposits? It's the best way to limit double-sided counterparty risk associated with stablecoins." Yeah, I never thought of it that way. It would be great, but the question is — if you're doing deposits of straight cash, I can see that. But if it's like a check, or you have an ACH from your company, you get paid and that goes to Chase or Wells Fargo, and then you deposit that and it says, "Okay, we'll wait for it" — if they can get it there quickly via stablecoins, that's interesting. But then who issues the stablecoins? If the bank does it, this would only work bank-to-bank. That'd be interesting though.
Does anyone think Sweatcoin still has a future? I don't. And I was a believer in it. Thankfully, all you had to do was download the app and you got it for free. It's not going to be worth anything. Very disappointed in that one. I was actually an early investor. My cliff was twelve months, so I watched something go from like a 10x gain to a 50% loss. That's what you do.
Still believe in Pi Coin? Anybody believe in any altcoin these days? Seems like a lot of them are just going down the tubes.
Unrealistic really calls it — SVB bank run caused USDC to depeg. I wonder how that actually happened, because it doesn't make any sense if you were backed one-to-one. But that was in 2022. Correct me in the comments. Was everything backed one-to-one? That would be the whole thing, right? If you're backed, you're backed. But if you do a run on SVB bank — that's the whole problem with fractionalized reserve lending. You give them $100, they loan out $90. "Can I have my $100 back?" "Yeah, not today." So I can see why the banking situation was a little odd. Now Luna and the depegging made a lot of sense because it was an algorithmically stable coin — not backed one-to-one.
Keep an eye on Flare, which is XRP's DeFi ecosystem. AVAX, Algo, and Stellar on the alts I care about right now. Stellar — I think they have a memorandum of agreement with Moneygram. I always get those two remittance companies sloshed around.
Everyone's from Belgium who's into TON. I was in TON, got out of it. It's a funny thing about TON — the Open Network. It was adjacent to Telegram but kind of split itself off. TON was essentially the native currency for Telegram. Telegram has historically speaking 1.1 billion monthly users. There are about 8.5 billion people in the world, and you have TON that you're able to use on this massive platform — and it just didn't do much. So when Elizabeth Warren is complaining to Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook because they have 3.5 billion users, just take a look at Telegram and TON and see how much that actually took off. Hint — it really didn't.
You know what, maybe I'm just blowing smoke. How is the price action doing right now? Not that price action is everything, but it is. I'm just in it for the tech. I'm just kidding. I couldn't even say that with a straight face.
TON — well, 30 days it's up 100%. That'd make me a believer too. Not too bad. Looking at the max chart: started out at 50 cents, had a nice run to $5 in 2021, and then a massive run to $8. Not that bad. In one year from May 3rd to May 7th, it did a 2x. Can't catch them all. It's not Pokémon.
Tang's giving me about 19% staking rewards. Not too bad. I'm still staking for 18%. I'm still staking AVAX. I'm staking Ethereum and Solana — some is in my Tangem wallet, the other is in my Roth IRA at iTrustCapital. Are we still retiring on Solana? Maybe.
I think some of the bigger plays — crypto is going to do pretty well — but over the next year or so, I still see AI probably outdoing us in quite a few sectors.