The Big Whale: Qivalis arrives with a lot of ambition. Can you simply summarise the project's objective and explain why it is emerging now rather than two or three years ago? Jan-Oliver Sell: The objective is pretty clear: we are building a euro stablecoin issuer backed by an
The Big Whale: 2025 has been a pivotal year for EtherFi. How would you sum up the last twelve months? Mike Silagadze: It's been a year of profound transformation. We started it as a staking protocol linked to the EigenLayer ecosystem, driven by a points and rewards dynamic.
In the world of digital assets, the inviolability of blockchain and the robustness of cryptographic protocols are often touted. Yet for companies operating in this sector, the most critical risk lies not in the blockchain itself, but in the traditional infrastructure layers. A series of major flaws at Waltio, which
It's a document that the financial centre and players in the crypto industry were nervously scrutinising. Concomitantly with the media La Lettre, The Big Whale was able to consult the confidential authorisation document sent by the French Treasury to Mara Holdings, the American Bitcoin mining giant, concerning the
The success of BitGo's IPO this week on the New York Stock Exchange is recognition of the regulated custody model for digital assets. And behind this operation is already taking shape one of the major events of 2026: Ledger's IPO. Positioned in the same segment, but
The Big Whale: What is your assessment since the launch of Spiko? Paul-Adrien Hyppolite: We officially launched mid-2024, in June. Our flagship metric, the one that everyone looks at, is assets under management. Today, we have just over $815 million spread across our various products. Our structuring products remain those
Key takeways * October 10, 2025 marked a turning point for the digital asset market: a wave of liquidations exceeding $19 billion caused a lasting shock of confidence among investors. * In the fourth quarter, digital assets underperformed all major asset classes. Bitcoin fell by 23.5%, Ethereum by 28.47%, and
The heightened tensions between Europe and the United States seen over the last few days are putting a theoretical hypothesis back on the table: what if a US administration decided one day to suspend access to the Visa and Mastercard networks on the European continent? Such a prospect remains unlikely,
The battle over the Clarity Act crystallises a fundamental clash between two giants. On one side, the crypto ecosystem, embodied by Coinbase, which is defending the ability to innovate around stablecoins, including via yield mechanisms. On the other, the major US banks, led by JPMorgan, which see in these products
Although the Federal Reserve has been pressured by the White House in the past, this time its chairman's response is unprecedented. In a video released on 12 January, Jerome Powell denounced the direct pressure exerted by the Trump administration to obtain a massive interest rate cut. This statement,
The important question in 2026 is no longer whether a DeFi protocol generates revenue: many do, and sometimes at levels comparable to those of a world-scale fintech. The real question is now stricter: who captures this value, who sends it back to the token, and with what degree of credibility
The Big Whale. Today, stablecoins are at the heart of all the tensions: regulatory tug-of-war in the United States, acceleration in Asia, persistent scepticism from the European Central Bank. Against this explosive backdrop, why does Abu Dhabi believe that now is the right time to launch a sovereign stablecoin? Precisely