Bitcoin continues to struggle as it attempts to reclaim the $90,000 level, with traders facing a market defined by hesitation rather than conviction. After yesterday’s bearish breakdown below $90K, price action has slipped back into indecisive territory, raising fresh questions about whether this pullback is a temporary shakeout or the start of a deeper corrective phase.
According to top analyst Axel Adler, a macro indicator called Trend Pulse helps explain why momentum has faded. Adler notes that since January 19, the market has remained in Bear Mode, with the Bull phase absent for 83 consecutive days. Two separate charts reinforce this shift, showing that both short-term momentum and quarterly performance have turned negative at the same time.
Trend Pulse recently shifted from Neutral to Bear, driven by a double-negative setup: the 14-day return has flipped red, and the SMA30 versus SMA200 trend signal is also negative. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s quarterly return sits at -19%, confirming macro weakness, but without the kind of extreme that often signals a definitive bottom.
Bitcoin Remains Stuck In Bear Mode As Macro Signals Stay Negative
Adler notes that Bitcoin’s last Bull Mode signal was printed on November 2, 2025, when BTC traded near $110,000—roughly 83 days ago. Since then, the market has failed to regain structural strength. Even the Neutral stretch between December 30 and January 18 proved too short and too weak to restore the long-term trend, leaving Bitcoin vulnerable once selling pressure returned.
Adler explains that the first trigger for improvement is the 14-day return moving back above 0, which would shift the regime from Bear to Neutral. However, a full transition back into Bull Mode requires a second condition: SMA30 breaking above SMA200. Given the current divergence between the two averages, that crossover would likely demand 3–4 weeks of sustained upside rather than a short-lived bounce.
The Bitcoin Price Performance chart adds macro context by tracking quarterly return (90D) as a sentiment proxy. Historically, readings above +75% align with euphoria, while values below 0% signal pessimism, and drops below -30% reflect capitulation.
Bitcoin’s quarterly return sits near -19%, negative but far from deep bear-market extremes. Yet the 7-day change (-6.8%) suggests downside momentum is accelerating after the $90K breakdown.
Together, Trend Pulse and quarterly returns point to moderate pessimism without final capitulation, leaving the market at a decision point.
BTC Moving Averages Cap Recovery
Bitcoin is trading near $89,000 after failing to hold above the $90,000 psychological level, reinforcing the market’s current indecision. The chart shows BTC printing a lower-high structure since the early November peak, followed by a sharp selloff that reset price into a wide consolidation range. After bottoming in late November, Bitcoin rebounded but struggled to build sustained momentum, repeatedly stalling on push attempts toward the mid-$90K zone.
From a trend perspective, BTC remains pressured beneath its key moving averages. Price is trading below the green long-term average and the blue mid-term average, both of which are now sloping downward, signaling that broader momentum continues to lean bearish.
The most recent rejection occurred as BTC briefly pushed into the $95K–$97K area, only to roll over and break back down toward the range lows. Meanwhile, the red long-term average remains well above price near the low-$100Ks, highlighting how far BTC would need to recover to reestablish a stronger macro uptrend.
Volume has picked up on selloffs relative to bounces, suggesting that downside moves are still being met with more urgency. For bulls, reclaiming $90K and then holding above $92K–$94K is key. Otherwise, the chart keeps risk open for a deeper pullback toward the mid-$80K region.
Featured image from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com
Following the unsuccessful markup of the long-awaited crypto market Structure bill (CLARITY Act) by the Senate Banking Committee, the Senate Agriculture Committee unveiled a new draft of the bill, with a scheduled markup session for Tuesday, January 27.
Stablecoin Yield Regulations Excluded
The Agriculture Committee’s version of the bill primarily addresses regulations under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which would gain expanded authority to regulate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
In contrast, the Senate Banking Committee’s section of the legislation focuses on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its oversight. Notably, the Agriculture draft allocates $150 million to support the CFTC in the implementation of the proposed law.
Market expert James Murphy reviewed the key provisions of the new draft and expressed optimism about its implications. He highlighted that the bill creates a pathway for decentralized finance (DeFi) to avoid CFTC regulation, providing important protections for developers and specific service providers from liability.
The Senate Agriculture Committee’s draft also excludes any regulations concerning stablecoin yields. This decision is significant, particularly as it addresses a critical provision that resulted in Coinbase (COIN) withdrawing its support for the Banking Committee’s version of the bill last week.
The Banking Committee’s version of the CLARITY Act aims to limit the yield that stablecoin platforms can offer. While banks support this approach due to concerns about deposits potentially flowing out, crypto firms oppose it, arguing that such restrictions hinder competition.
In contrast, the Agriculture Committee bill seeks to exempt stablecoins from CFTC regulations and relies on existing frameworks like the already passed stablecoin bill, or GENIUS Act, which mandates that stablecoins be fully backed.
Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman expressed appreciation for the collaborative efforts among lawmakers, particularly mentioning Senator Cory Booker and his staff for their contributions to consumer protections and CFTC authority.
Despite the remaining differences in fundamental policy issues with its Democratic counterpart, the Committee’s chair emphasized the importance of moving the bill forward:
While it’s unfortunate that we couldn’t reach an agreement, I am grateful for the collaboration that has made this legislation better. It’s time we move this bill, and I look forward to the markup next week.
But amid the broader cryptocurrency industry’s optimism surrounding the Agriculture Committee’s version of the market structure bill, the timeline for advancing the overall legislation remains uncertain.
Bloomberg reported that the Senate Banking Committee is expected to delay consideration of its own portion of the bill, which could push discussions into late February or even March.
Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
As discussions surrounding the CLARITY Act—often referred to as the crypto market structure bill—continue in Washington, Kristin Smith, President of the Solana Policy Institute, has provided insights on the current status of the legislation and the organization’s top priorities.
Solana Policy Institute’s Optimism For CLARITY Act
One of the main priorities disclosed by Smith in a recent post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), is the importance of protecting open-source developers in the legislative landscape.
Smith pointed out that the recent delay in the markup of the market structure bill last week after Coinbase’s withdrawal should be seen as a temporary setback. “Despite the delay, industry engagement remains robust, and there is clear bipartisan support to achieve durable regulatory clarity for market structure,” she noted.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is making advancements with its own draft of the legislation expected to be released on Wednesday, as earlier reported by Bitcoinist.
Smith also highlighted a shared objective: to create a framework that protects consumers, fosters innovation, and provides certainty for developers operating in the United States. A central tenet of this goal is the safeguarding of developers, which Smith argued is crucial for the success of the industry.
Smith Advocates For Developer Protections
The Solana Institute was founded to ensure that policymakers gain a comprehensive understanding of public blockchains and the protocols that underpin them.
Smith articulated the critical role that open-source software plays within the crypto ecosystem, noting that developers around the world collaborate to produce software that anyone can inspect, use, or improve. “Openness is a strength—not a liability,” she asserted.
However, she raised concerns regarding the case against Roman Storm of Tornado Cash, indicating that it treats open-source innovation as something questionable. Smith warned that penalizing developers merely for writing and publishing open-source code endangers all those involved in such collaborative efforts.
She emphasized the “chilling effect” that the prosecution could have on open-source developers, asserting that writing code is an expressive act protected by the First Amendment.
Smith called for clear policy that differentiates between bad actors and developers working on lawful, general-purpose tools. To bolster this cause, she encouraged supporters to draft letters expressing their stance in favor of open-source protections.
Roman Storm responded to Smith’s support, thanking her and the broader community for advocating for open-source principles. He remarked, “Criminalizing the act of writing and publishing code threatens not just one developer, but the foundations of digital security, privacy, and innovation.”
At the time of writing, Solana’s native token, SOL, was trading at $130.33, mirroring the performance of the broader crypto market, dropping 11% in the weekly time frame.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com
PEPE is finally entering a critical phase as recent price action suggests the market is actively pushing out bears ahead of a potential structural shift. Pseudonymous crypto analyst ‘The Composite Trader’ argues that the move is less about immediate upside and more about completing a controlled reversal process and preventing any further downside.
In an X post this Tuesday, The Composite Trader updated a setup he first outlined on January 5, explaining that PEPE’s sharp bullish expansion at the start of the year was never meant to be sustained. He labeled the move as manipulative and stated that a price reversal toward a yearly open was the intended outcome.
PEPE Stages Reversal Move To Force Out Bears
His accompanying chart supports this narrative by illustrating a brutal downtrend that began in late 2025, with PEPE plummeting nearly 50% before following a descending curved channel. The analyst highlighted a Break of Structure (BOS) at a lower level in the pattern, followed by a short-lived rally into the $0.0065-$0.0075 region. This upward move was explicitly labeled “manipulation” on the chart, pushed higher to hunt for buy-side liquidity, with no real demand to sustain higher prices.
According to the analyst, PEPE’s ongoing reversal process is designed to force out current bearish positions before any confirmed trend change. The chart shows that the meme coin has already corrected by roughly 33.21%, wiping out some of the gains it achieved earlier this year. This move aligns closely with The Composite Trader’s earlier expectation that the yearly open would be challenged, confirming the market’s downward momentum.
The analyst also noted that similar price patterns are emerging across other altcoin pairs, reflecting the broader impact of whale-driven movements. He has emphasized the importance of understanding the timing behind these reversals, suggesting that not every price shift signals a sustainable uptrend.
Furthermore, the Composite Trader has said that accumulation schematics and bullish reversals for PEPE will be confirmed when the time is right. Until then, the market remains bearish with strategic price corrections, requiring patience from investors and traders.
Analyst Predicts More Decline For PEPE Price
Crypto analyst Davie Satoshi has also shared insights on PEPE’s price behavior and its potential next moves. He predicts that PEPE could decline even further if Bitcoin crashes to $85,000 and $75,000. Based on his analysis, PEPE’s price movement is now closely tied to BTC, and the lower Bitcoin goes, the more likely PEPE will follow.
Excluding PEPE, Satoshi forecasts that all meme coins could enter a downtrend if Bitcoin declines. Despite this bearish outlook, he believes PEPE will likely rebound and move back up. The analyst expects the meme coin to reverse sharply and find new support levels. He advises non-PEPE holders to take advantage of the current downtrend by buying the dip.
The Senate Banking Committee delayed the anticipated markup of its crypto market structure bill draft, prompting the Agriculture Committee to take action. The Agriculture Committee is set to release its own version of the bill’s draft today, just ahead of a crucial vote scheduled for next week.
Coinbase Faces Pressure To Negotiate Yield Deal
Eleanor Terret, a reporter with Crypto In America who has been closely monitoring congressional developments regarding cryptocurrency, reported that staffers from the Banking Committee hope a successful bipartisan agreement spearheaded by their counterparts in the Ag Committee could facilitate a smoother markup process.
The responsibility now largely falls on Coinbase—whose sudden withdrawal of support for the bill contributed to the halt in the markup process—to negotiate a deal with banking leaders on yield. At the same time, Binance and Ripple’s leadership have expressed support for the bill’s latest version during their appearance in Davos.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expressed his apprehensions regarding the implications of the bill last week. He raised concerns that the legislation could prohibit tokenized equities, impose restrictions on decentralized finance (DeFi), and expand government access to financial data, potentially sacrificing individual privacy.
The executive also cautioned that the bill could shift regulatory power from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which may eliminate stablecoin rewards and hinder competition within the crypto sector.
President Trump Optimistic About Crypto Market Bill
Adding to the tension, Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the White House Crypto Council, took to social media late Tuesday to criticize Coinbase, warning that the delay in the market structure bill could invite stricter regulations under an administration less favorable to digital assets.
Witt’s remarks seemed to corroborate reports from Crypto In America indicating that the White House is frustrated with Coinbase’s withdrawal, which has contributed to the legislative stall.
In a related note, President Donald Trump acknowledged the ongoing efforts surrounding the market structure legislation during his speech in Davos on Wednesday.
He expressed hope that Congress would finalize the bill soon, stating, “Congress is working very hard on crypto market structure legislation, which I hope to sign very soon, unlocking new pathways for Americans to reach financial freedom.”
Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
Okay, real talk. When's the last time you actually thought about IPv6? Like, really thought about it?
I'm guessing it's been sitting on your to-do list collecting dust. Maybe you glance at it occasionally, tell yourself dual-stack is working fine, that IPv4 will stick around for another few years at least. I mean, it's been working this long, right?
Why global instant payments fail not because of technology, but because settlement, governance and programmability remain structurally misaligned
Layered global payment architecture: Fast execution and orchestration layers sit above a stable settlement foundation, highlighting why global instant payments depend less on new technology and more on aligning settlement, governance and programmability.
Abstract
Despite significant advances in instant payment systems, tokenisation and digital asset infrastructures, global payments remain structurally fragmented. While execution speeds have increased markedly, settlement finality, governance and programmability continue to be addressed in isolation rather than as integrated components of a coherent financial architecture. This fragmentation becomes particularly visible as payment processes move towards real-time, event-driven and increasingly automated models in global trade and treasury operations.
This article examines four prominent approaches to modern payment infrastructure: Brazil’s Pix, Europe’s SEPA, emerging BRICS cross-border initiatives and the Bank for International Settlements’ experimental projects, not as competing systems, but as partial solutions optimising different layers of the payment stack. Each addresses specific challenges, ranging from domestic execution efficiency to regional standardisation and wholesale settlement in central bank money. None, however, provides an end-to-end framework that aligns execution, settlement finality, governance and programmability across jurisdictions.
By analysing these initiatives through a layered architectural lens, the article argues that the central challenge of global instant payments is no longer technological capability, but institutional coordination and settlement design. It proposes that sustainable innovation in global payments requires the integration of programmable processes with interoperable settlement layers anchored in central bank money, supported by open governance and legally robust finality. In this context, the debate shifts from the optimisation of individual rails to the design of shared infrastructure capable of supporting real-time global trade.
Introduction
Over the past decade, the global payments landscape has undergone a remarkable acceleration. Instant payment systems, real-time treasury operations, tokenised assets and digital settlement experiments have moved from conceptual pilots to operational reality in multiple regions. Yet this apparent progress masks a deeper structural tension. While payments are increasingly executed in real time, the underlying settlement, governance and legal finality mechanisms remain fragmented, jurisdiction-bound and inconsistently integrated. The result is a global payments environment that is faster, but not fundamentally more coherent.
This tension is becoming increasingly visible as global trade and corporate finance adopt event-driven and programmable operating models. Execution speed alone is no longer sufficient. As payment processes automate and scale across borders, the question shifts from how quickly money moves to when, where and under which authority value is finally settled. It is at this architectural level, rather than at the level of individual products or political narratives, that today’s debates around instant payments, central bank digital currencies and alternative settlement networks must be examined.
This article approaches that examination by comparing four influential payment infrastructures, Pix, SEPA, emerging BRICS initiatives and BIS-led experiments, not as rivals, but as complementary attempts to address different layers of a shared problem.
Speed Is No Longer the Binding Constraint
For much of the past three decades, the evolution of payment systems has been framed primarily as a problem of speed and efficiency. Batch-based processing, limited operating hours and fragmented correspondent banking arrangements were widely identified as the principal bottlenecks in cross-border and domestic payments. Considerable institutional and technological effort was therefore directed towards accelerating execution, reducing cut-off times and improving straight-through processing.
These efforts have largely succeeded. A growing number of jurisdictions now operate domestic instant payment systems that provide near-real-time execution and immediate availability of funds to end users. Brazil’s Pix, Europe’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst), India’s UPI and similar systems demonstrate that real-time execution at scale is technically feasible, economically viable and socially impactful. From a purely operational perspective, the question of “how fast payments can move” has largely been answered.
However, the increasing prevalence of real-time execution has exposed a more fundamental limitation. Speed optimises only one layer of the payment process: execution. It does not, by itself, resolve questions of settlement finality, legal certainty, balance sheet exposure or cross-system interoperability. In fact, as execution accelerates, the weaknesses of underlying settlement arrangements become more pronounced rather than less relevant.
This distinction is particularly important in cross-border and multi-currency contexts. While instant payment systems can deliver rapid crediting of accounts, the ultimate settlement of obligations often continues to rely on deferred processes, commercial bank money and jurisdiction-specific legal frameworks. As a result, faster execution may coexist with persistent settlement risk, intraday liquidity pressures and fragmented governance structures.
From an architectural perspective, this implies that further gains in payment system performance cannot be achieved by execution-layer optimisation alone. Once speed ceases to be the binding constraint, attention must shift to the design and coordination of settlement mechanisms, governance models and the legal foundations of finality. It is at this level that contemporary initiatives increasingly diverge, and where meaningful comparison between systems such as Pix, SEPA, BRICS-linked proposals and BIS-led experiments becomes analytically productive.
Execution, Clearing and Settlement as Distinct Architectural Layers
A persistent source of confusion in contemporary payment debates arises from the tendency to treat execution, clearing and settlement as a single, homogeneous process. While closely related in operational terms, these functions represent analytically distinct layers within the payment architecture, each governed by different technical, legal and institutional logics.
Execution refers to the initiation and routing of a payment instruction and the conditional crediting of accounts. Modern instant payment systems have significantly optimised this layer, enabling near-immediate user-facing outcomes. Clearing, by contrast, concerns the calculation and netting of obligations between participating institutions. Settlement represents the final discharge of those obligations through the transfer of a settlement asset, thereby extinguishing counterparty claims and producing legal finality.
In traditional banking infrastructures, these layers are tightly coupled but not temporally aligned. Execution may occur within seconds, while clearing and settlement may follow hours or even days later, often across different systems and balance sheets. This decoupling has historically been managed through credit risk, liquidity buffers and legal constructs designed for batch-based environments.
As payment systems move towards real-time and continuous operation, this architectural separation becomes increasingly consequential. Accelerated execution compresses the time available to manage settlement risk, while automated processes reduce the scope for discretionary intervention. Under such conditions, the nature of the settlement asset and the legal framework governing finality assume heightened importance.
Commercial bank money, which dominates settlement in most existing systems, represents a private liability and therefore embeds counterparty risk by design. Central bank money, by contrast, constitutes a public settlement asset with unique properties of legal certainty, risk insulation and systemic trust. The distinction between these assets is not merely technical but foundational, as it determines how risk is distributed across participants and how resilient a system remains under stress.
An architectural analysis must therefore distinguish clearly between improvements at the execution layer and transformations at the settlement layer. While the former can deliver efficiency gains and enhanced user experience, only the latter can fundamentally alter the risk, governance and interoperability characteristics of a payment system. This distinction provides the analytical basis for assessing whether current initiatives represent incremental optimisation or structural innovation.
It is against this layered framework that domestic instant payment systems, regional standards and emerging cross-border settlement proposals must be evaluated. Their differences lie less in technological sophistication than in how, and whether, they address the settlement layer explicitly.
Domestic Instant Payment Systems as Execution-Layer Optimisations
Over the past decade, a growing number of jurisdictions have introduced domestic instant payment systems designed to modernise retail and business payments. These systems typically prioritise speed, availability and user experience, offering continuous operation, immediate confirmation and increasingly rich data exchange. From an execution perspective, they represent a significant departure from batch-oriented legacy infrastructures.
Architecturally, however, these systems are best understood as execution-layer optimisations rather than as comprehensive transformations of the payment stack. They focus on the rapid transmission and processing of payment instructions between participant institutions, often supported by enhanced messaging standards and real-time liquidity management. The user-facing outcome is near-immediate crediting, which materially improves cash-flow visibility and operational efficiency for end users.
Crucially, these improvements do not, in themselves, alter the underlying settlement logic. In most implementations, final settlement continues to rely on commercial bank money, with positions ultimately reconciled through deferred or periodic settlement processes. Even where prefunding or intraday liquidity mechanisms are employed, the settlement asset remains a private liability rather than a public one.
This distinction matters because execution speed and settlement finality are not interchangeable. Instant execution reduces operational friction but does not eliminate counterparty exposure. As long as settlement occurs outside central bank balance sheets, the system’s resilience depends on the creditworthiness and liquidity management of participating institutions, as well as on legal arrangements designed to manage failure scenarios.
From a systemic perspective, domestic instant payment systems therefore deliver substantial efficiency gains without fundamentally reconfiguring risk allocation. They improve how quickly value appears to move, but not how or where value is ultimately settled. This makes them highly effective within stable domestic environments, yet structurally limited when extended across borders, currencies or regulatory regimes.
The growing success of these systems can paradoxically obscure this limitation. High adoption rates and positive user experience create the impression of infrastructural completeness, even though the settlement layer remains unchanged. As long as payments remain predominantly domestic and low-risk, this architectural gap may appear tolerable. However, as real-time execution becomes the norm and payment flows increasingly span jurisdictions, the absence of an equally real-time, risk-free settlement layer becomes more pronounced.
Understanding domestic instant payment systems as optimisation layers rather than as full-stack solutions is therefore essential. It clarifies why further gains in speed and availability, while valuable, cannot by themselves address challenges of cross-border interoperability, systemic risk reduction and global scalability. These challenges reside not at the execution layer, but at the level of settlement architecture.
Why Cross-Border Extension Exposes the Limits of Execution-Only Models
The extension of real-time payment capabilities across borders introduces a set of structural challenges that execution-layer optimisation alone cannot resolve. While domestic instant payment systems benefit from legal harmonisation, shared currency frameworks and aligned supervisory regimes, these conditions rarely persist beyond national or regional boundaries.
Cross-border payments operate at the intersection of multiple currencies, legal systems, regulatory frameworks and liquidity regimes. Execution speed in such environments does not simply amplify efficiency; it amplifies coordination problems. Each additional jurisdiction introduces new settlement calendars, risk thresholds, compliance requirements and failure modes, which cannot be neutralised by faster messaging or improved user interfaces alone.
In execution-only architectures, cross-border connectivity is typically achieved through bilateral or hub-based linkages between domestic systems. These arrangements focus on routing payment instructions and managing prefunding or liquidity bridges between participants. While such approaches can reduce friction at the margins, they leave the fundamental settlement logic unchanged. Obligations continue to be settled in commercial bank money, often across multiple balance sheets and time zones.
This creates a structural asymmetry: execution becomes real-time, while settlement remains fragmented, deferred and risk-bearing. As a result, credit and liquidity risk are not eliminated but redistributed, often in opaque ways. The faster the execution layer operates, the more sensitive the system becomes to settlement disruptions, liquidity bottlenecks and legal uncertainty.
Furthermore, execution-only cross-border models tend to rely on conditional guarantees, bilateral credit lines or collateralisation schemes to manage risk. These mechanisms introduce complexity and cost, and they scale poorly as the number of participants and corridors increases. What appears manageable in limited pilot corridors becomes increasingly brittle when extended to global networks.
From an institutional perspective, this exposes a deeper limitation. Cross-border payments are not merely technical exchanges between systems; they are legal and economic events that require universally recognised finality. Without a shared settlement asset that is trusted across jurisdictions, execution-layer connectivity cannot produce true interoperability. It can only simulate immediacy while deferring risk resolution.
The consequence is a proliferation of partially connected networks rather than a coherent global infrastructure. Each linkage optimises locally, but the system as a whole remains fragmented. This fragmentation is not accidental; it reflects the absence of a settlement layer capable of operating across borders with uniform legal certainty and risk neutrality.
Cross-border extension thus acts as a stress test for execution-only models. It reveals that speed, availability and user experience, while necessary, are insufficient conditions for global scalability. The binding constraint is not how fast instructions move, but how and where value is ultimately settled.
The Settlement Asset as the Missing Variable in Global Scalability
The structural limitations identified in cross-border execution-only models ultimately converge on a single, often underexplored variable: the nature of the settlement asset itself. While execution systems determine how payment instructions are transmitted and processed, it is the settlement asset that determines whether obligations are discharged with legal certainty, risk neutrality and systemic trust.
In most existing payment architectures, settlement relies on commercial bank money. This asset represents a private liability, issued by individual institutions and embedded within their balance sheets. While commercial bank money functions efficiently within established domestic frameworks, its suitability diminishes as payment processes become continuous, automated and cross-border by design. The resulting exposure to credit, liquidity and legal risk does not disappear with faster execution; it becomes more immediate and more tightly coupled to system stability.
Global scalability requires a settlement asset that is universally recognised, legally final and institutionally neutral. Central bank money uniquely fulfils these criteria. It constitutes the ultimate settlement asset within a currency area, free from private credit risk and anchored in public law. Historically, access to central bank settlement has been restricted to regulated financial institutions, reflecting the batch-oriented nature of legacy infrastructures and the need to manage systemic risk through controlled participation.
As payment processes evolve towards real-time operation, this historical separation between execution innovation and settlement architecture becomes increasingly untenable. Automated, condition-based transactions require deterministic settlement outcomes. Without a settlement asset that can support continuous finality, programmability at the execution layer merely accelerates the accumulation of contingent claims.
This observation reframes the debate around payment modernisation. The central challenge is not how to connect execution systems more efficiently, but how to anchor those systems to a settlement layer capable of operating at the same temporal and legal resolution. Without such anchoring, global interoperability remains fragile, dependent on bilateral arrangements and risk mitigation techniques that do not scale.
The settlement asset therefore functions as the gravitational centre of the payment architecture. It determines not only risk distribution, but also governance, access and trust. Any attempt to construct globally interoperable payment infrastructures without addressing this layer will inevitably reproduce fragmentation at higher speeds.
Recognising the settlement asset as a design variable rather than a given marks a conceptual shift. It opens the analytical space for institutional innovation at the infrastructure level, rather than continued optimisation within inherited constraints. This shift provides the foundation for understanding why recent initiatives increasingly focus on settlement itself, rather than solely on execution efficiency.
Institutional Responses to the Settlement Constraint
Once the settlement asset is recognised as the limiting factor in global payment scalability, recent institutional initiatives can be reinterpreted not as isolated experiments, but as convergent responses to a shared architectural problem. Across jurisdictions and governance models, a growing number of actors are exploring ways to reintroduce central bank money as an active settlement layer capable of supporting real-time, cross-border processes.
At the multilateral level, initiatives coordinated by international institutions have focused explicitly on settlement interoperability rather than on execution efficiency. Experimental platforms exploring multi-currency settlement, shared ledgers and synchronised settlement mechanisms reflect a recognition that global payments cannot be stabilised through bilateral optimisation alone. These projects treat settlement finality as a public good, requiring coordination across central banks rather than competition between private intermediaries.
Parallel to these efforts, several emerging market economies and regional blocs have begun to articulate settlement infrastructures aimed at reducing dependency on correspondent banking chains and dominant reserve currencies. While often framed in geopolitical terms, these initiatives are more coherently understood as attempts to regain control over settlement finality and liquidity management in cross-border trade. Their common feature is not political alignment, but the explicit use of central bank money as the settlement anchor.
Within advanced economies, central bank digital currency initiatives represent a complementary response. While many early discussions have focused on retail use cases, the underlying architectural implication is broader. By making central bank money natively compatible with digital infrastructures, CBDCs reopen the question of how settlement access, programmability and interoperability can be designed for continuous operation. Importantly, this does not imply a displacement of private sector innovation, but a reconfiguration of its foundation.
These institutional responses share a critical characteristic: they shift the locus of innovation from the execution layer to the settlement layer. Rather than attempting to optimise existing commercial bank-based arrangements indefinitely, they seek to redesign the conditions under which settlement occurs. This marks a departure from incrementalism towards structural intervention at the infrastructure level.
At the same time, these approaches remain incomplete. Most initiatives address either wholesale or retail settlement in isolation, and few are yet integrated into corporate payment and treasury workflows. Nevertheless, they signal an emerging consensus: global payment systems cannot achieve real-time, programmable and interoperable operation without revisiting the role of central bank money in settlement.
Understanding these developments as architectural responses rather than ideological positions allows for a more constructive evaluation. It highlights convergence where public discourse often emphasises divergence, and it clarifies that the underlying objective is not control over execution, but stability, finality and trust at the settlement layer.
Synthesising Pix, SEPA, BRICS and BIS Within a Layered Framework
When examined through a layered architectural lens, the apparent diversity of contemporary payment initiatives becomes analytically coherent. Systems such as Pix, SEPA Instant, emerging BRICS-linked settlement efforts and BIS-coordinated projects do not represent competing visions of the future, but rather address different layers of the same structural problem.
Domestic instant payment systems, exemplified by Pix and SEPA Instant, operate primarily at the execution layer. They demonstrate that real-time payment initiation, continuous availability and high-volume processing can be achieved reliably within harmonised legal and currency environments. Their success lies in operational efficiency, user adoption and economic inclusion. However, their settlement logic remains anchored in commercial bank money, rendering them optimised yet incomplete from a global scalability perspective.
Cross-border initiatives associated with BRICS economies focus on a different constraint. Their primary objective is not execution speed for end users, but sovereignty over settlement and liquidity management in international trade. By emphasising settlement in central bank money and reducing reliance on correspondent banking chains and dominant reserve currencies, these efforts explicitly target the settlement layer. While often interpreted through geopolitical narratives, architecturally they address the same deficiency identified in execution-only models: the absence of a universally trusted settlement anchor.
BIS-led initiatives occupy a distinct but complementary position. They do not aim to create production payment systems, but to explore interoperable settlement architectures across currencies and jurisdictions. By experimenting with shared settlement platforms, synchronised settlement mechanisms and multi-currency coordination, these projects explicitly treat settlement as a design problem rather than an inherited constraint. Their value lies less in immediate deployment and more in defining architectural primitives for future systems.
Viewed together, these initiatives illustrate a fragmented but converging trajectory. Execution-layer optimisation, regional standardisation and settlement-layer innovation are progressing in parallel, but largely without integration. Each addresses a necessary condition for global instant payments, yet none alone provides a sufficient solution. The absence of a unifying architectural framework explains why debates often oscillate between domestic efficiency, monetary sovereignty and technological experimentation without resolving their interdependence.
This synthesis suggests that the current landscape should not be interpreted as a competition between models, but as an incomplete assembly of layers. The challenge lies not in selecting a single approach, but in designing interfaces between them that preserve their respective strengths while addressing their limitations.
Toward a Coherent Architecture for Global Instant Payments
A coherent global instant payment architecture cannot be achieved through further optimisation at individual layers alone. Nor can it emerge from isolated institutional initiatives, however sophisticated. What is required is an explicit architectural alignment between execution, clearing and settlement, supported by governance structures capable of operating across jurisdictions.
At the execution layer, systems must support real-time, programmable and data-rich payment initiation. This capability is already largely in place. At the settlement layer, value transfer must occur in assets that provide legal finality, systemic trust and neutrality across borders. Central bank money, whether accessed through existing infrastructures or digitally native representations, remains uniquely positioned to fulfil this role.
Crucially, programmability should be understood as a property of processes, not of money itself. Payment logic, compliance rules and conditional execution belong in systems and applications. Finality belongs in the settlement asset. Conflating these functions risks either undermining trust or constraining innovation. A coherent architecture must therefore separate concerns while ensuring deterministic interaction between layers.
From an institutional perspective, this implies a redefinition of roles. Central banks act as infrastructure providers and guarantors of settlement integrity, not as competitors in product markets. Private institutions innovate at the execution and service layers, building differentiated offerings on top of shared settlement foundations. International coordination bodies provide the standards and interfaces necessary for interoperability.
The transition to such an architecture will be incremental rather than revolutionary. It will require bridging domestic instant payment systems to interoperable settlement layers, integrating wholesale and retail perspectives, and aligning regulatory frameworks with architectural realities. Yet the direction is clear. As payment processes become real-time and programmable, settlement finality can no longer remain deferred, fragmented or opaque.
The future of global instant payments will not be defined by the fastest execution rail, the most sophisticated token or the loudest political narrative. It will be defined by the ability to align speed with finality, innovation with trust, and domestic efficiency with global interoperability. Designing that alignment is no longer a theoretical exercise. It is the next structural challenge for the global financial system.
Conclusion
Viewed through the lens of Global Instant Payments, the developments discussed in this article point to a common architectural requirement rather than divergent institutional agendas. The RELEVANT framework, Regulatory, Economic and Legal Enablement through Value Alignment and Networked Trust, provides a way to integrate execution efficiency, settlement finality and governance coherence into a single analytical construct. It emphasises that sustainable innovation in payments does not arise from isolated optimisation, but from aligning technological capability with legal certainty and institutional trust at scale. In this sense, GIP is not a call for faster payments alone, but for an infrastructure in which real-time execution and central bank settlement operate as complementary layers, enabling programmable, resilient and globally interoperable financial processes.
Someone listening to last week’s GeekWire Podcast caught something we missed: a misleading comment by Alexa during our voice ordering demo — illustrating the challenges of ordering by voice vs. screen. We followed up with Amazon, which says it has fixed the underlying bug.
On this week’s show, we play the audio of the order again. Can you catch it?
Plus, Microsoft announces a “community first” approach to AI data centers after backlash over power and water usage — and President Trump scooped us on the story. We discuss the larger issues and play a highlight from our interview with Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Bitcoin is facing a critical test as bulls try to push price above a key resistance zone, hoping to confirm that the recent rebound has real traction. After weeks of choppy trading and repeated rejections, the market is again pressing into levels that could decide whether BTC transitions back into recovery mode or slips into another leg of consolidation. While momentum has improved in recent sessions, the broader structure still reflects uncertainty, with investors split between breakout expectations and caution after the latest correction.
A report from XWIN Research Japan suggests Bitcoin is not currently in a strong directional trend, but instead remains trapped in a consolidation phase defined by range-bound price action and ongoing structural rebuilding. In this environment, the market is attempting to reset positioning after heavy volatility, while supply and demand continue to balance out near major technical levels.
According to the analysis, the bias remains conditionally bullish, meaning upside continuation is still possible if Bitcoin can secure acceptance above resistance and hold it as support. However, the report also warns that short-term overheating risks persist, especially if leverage builds too quickly or price surges without sustained spot demand behind it. With Bitcoin approaching a pivotal inflection point, the next move could be decisive for broader market sentiment.
Whales Take Control as Retail Activity Stays Muted
The report adds that one of the most important shifts in Bitcoin’s current structure is the change in participant quality. CryptoQuant data suggests retail involvement in both spot and futures markets remains muted, while “Big Whale Orders” continue to appear across spot exchanges and derivatives venues.
This points to a market that is being driven less by impulsive speculation and more by larger players gradually positioning through size and patience, shaping liquidity conditions around key price levels.
This trend is reinforced by the 90-day Spot Taker CVD, which has flipped back into Taker Buy Dominant territory. In simple terms, aggressive market buying is increasing again, yet price has not accelerated sharply.
That combination often implies that sell-side pressure is being absorbed, and available supply is being quietly taken off the table at lower levels. Rather than signaling euphoric demand, the behavior aligns more with structural accumulation and controlled risk-taking.
At the same time, futures markets are heating up. Rising volumes and taker buying in derivatives suggest a more speculative layer is returning, raising the risk of short-term volatility if leverage becomes overcrowded. Still, spot flows indicate whales are absorbing supply, meaning futures-driven shakeouts can occur while underlying accumulation continues. The base case remains retail fading as whales take control, unless leverage distorts the structure again.
Bitcoin Faces Heavy Moving Average Resistance
Bitcoin is holding near $95,500 after a sharp recovery rally that began from the late-November lows. The chart shows BTC rebounding aggressively from the $85,000–$88,000 area, forming a clean sequence of higher lows and higher highs into mid-January. This move suggests that buyers have regained short-term control, but the market is now entering a key resistance zone where rallies have repeatedly stalled since the breakdown in November.
The most immediate level to watch is the cluster between $95,000 and $98,000, where price is now pressing into overhead supply. BTC is also approaching the declining medium-term moving averages, which are acting as dynamic resistance and signaling that the broader trend is still recovering, not fully reversed.
A clean daily close above this zone would strengthen the case for continuation toward the $100,000 psychological level and potentially a retest of the $105,000 area.
However, if Bitcoin fails to hold above $94,000–$95,000, the breakout risks turning into another liquidity sweep followed by consolidation. In that scenario, support sits near $92,000, with a deeper pullback targeting the $88,000–$90,000 range where buyers previously stepped in. For now, the trend is improving, but confirmation depends on reclaiming resistance with sustained volume.
Featured image from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com
On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI.
TSMC manufactures chips for companies including Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm, making it a linchpin of the global electronics supply chain. The company produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductors, and its factories in Taiwan have become a focal point of US-China tensions over technology and trade. When TSMC reports strong demand and ramps up spending, it signals that the companies designing AI chips expect years of continued growth.
"All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real—not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of—we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless—I mean, that for many years to come."
Despite a surprising postponement of the markup for the crypto market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act, lawmakers are maintaining a hopeful outlook for the passage of the legislation.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott announced the delay on Wednesday, stating that bipartisan negotiations are ongoing. He characterized the pause as tactical rather than indicative of failure.
Coinbase CEO Voices Alarm Over CLARITY Act’s Potential Impact
In a message on social media platform X (previously Twitter), Scott expressed confidence, noting, “I’ve spoken with leaders across the crypto industry, the financial sector, and my Democratic and Republican colleagues, and everyone remains at the table working in good faith.”
In an interview with Fox News prior to the cancellation of the markup, Scott noted that the Republican Party has made significant efforts to incorporate bipartisan support into the legislation.
“We’ve taken over 90 of the Democrats’ priorities and filtered them,” he explained. Scott highlighted key issues, such as anti-money laundering (AML) measures, which are important to both parties, aligning on national security concerns.
However, the momentum faced a setback when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong withdrew the company’s support for the CLARITY Act in its current form.
Armstrong raised concerns that the bill could prohibit tokenized equities, impose restrictions on decentralized finance (DeFi), and expand government access to financial data at the expense of individual privacy.
The executive also cautioned that the legislation could shift power from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and eliminate stablecoin rewards, potentially sidelining crypto competition.
Crypto Czar Urges Industry To Resolve Differences
Following the postponement of the vote, White House crypto czar David Sacks urged the industry to use this delay to address any remaining disagreements. “Passage of market structure legislation remains as close as it’s ever been,” Sacks stated on X.
The Trump administration continues to express a commitment to collaborating with Scott, the Senate Banking Committee, and industry stakeholders to advance bipartisan crypto legislation as swiftly as possible.
Although the specifics of the bill are still under negotiation, there is widespread consensus among both asset managers and experts that federal intervention is crucial not only for the growth of cryptocurrency but also for consumer protection.
Kyle Wool, CEO of Dominari Securities, shared his perspective, stating, “As newer, more fringe industries grow and capital increases, there will be a greater need for oversight from regulators.”
He outlined that proper regulations should not stifle innovation but instead ensure that markets remain fair, honest, and efficient for all investors. Wool added that such measures would also make the crypto market accessible to a broader audience, enhancing liquidity and depth.
Pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis, who has been an advocate for the growth and development of the digital asset industry, asserted that lawmakers are now “closer than ever,” with ongoing negotiations leaning toward a bipartisan agreement.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com
CISA and international partners issued new guidance on securing AI in operational technology, warning of OT risks and urging stronger governance and safeguards.
CISA and international partners issued new guidance on securing AI in operational technology, warning of OT risks and urging stronger governance and safeguards.
On Thursday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced API access deals with Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI, expanding its effort to get major tech companies to pay for high-volume API access to Wikipedia content, which these companies use to train AI models like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT.
The deals mean that most major AI developers have now signed on to the foundation's Wikimedia Enterprise program, a commercial subsidiary that sells high-speed API access to Wikipedia's 65 million articles at higher speeds and volumes than the free public APIs provide. Wikipedia's content remains freely available under a Creative Commons license, but the Enterprise program charges for faster, higher-volume access to the data. The foundation did not disclose the financial terms of the deals.
The new partners join Google, which signed a deal with Wikimedia Enterprise in 2022, as well as smaller companies like Ecosia, Nomic, Pleias, ProRata, and Reef Media. The revenue helps offset infrastructure costs for the nonprofit, which otherwise relies on small public donations while watching its content become a staple of training data for AI models.
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