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Crypto at 10%, India's e₹ Scale & Agentic AI's 2026 Inflection
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Fed reveals crypto usage stalled below its 2021 peak while unbanked Americans lead payment adoption — and India's digital rupee quietly crosses a scale milestone. Today's briefing covers six critical developments reshaping payments, CBDCs, institutional crypto, and AI deployment in banking.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Ten percent. That's the share of American adults who used or invested in crypto in 2025, according to new Federal Reserve survey data.
The payment number gets more interesting when you segment it. Unbanked Americans used crypto for transactions at three times the rate of banked adults.
The institutional side is moving in a different direction. Banks are now treating crypto as a separate profit and loss line, not an innovation experiment.
Across the Atlantic and further east, India's digital rupee has crossed thirty-four thousand crore rupees in cumulative transactions, with circulation hitting just over one thousand crore rupees by March of this year. That's no longer a pilot.
Two other developments deserve attention as near-term watchpoints. The European Union's digital identity rollout is scheduled for 2026, and it'll reshape how financial services handle customer onboarding and payment authentication.
One more development worth flagging. European fintech Bunch closed a thirty-point-one million euro Series B to modernise private markets infrastructure.
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