If You Think Bitcoin Is Just for Speculation, You’re Already Falling Behind

How did Square and SoFi change the picture?

Square announced Bitcoin-integrated payments in October 2025, saying it “brings Bitcoin to Main Street.” The launch also brought small businesses a wallet that allows Square customers to accept Bitcoin payments. They can also automatically receive dollars and convert them to BTC, or receive BTC and convert it to dollars, without lump-sum payouts.

Square has about four million sellers, and it has incentivized them to move in the direction of Bitcoin transactions by charging zero processing fees until 2027. Businesses accepting these types of payments incur no chargebacks and receive instant access to funds in the chosen currency. Square is investing in what it sees as the future of payments. Bitcoin, it says in its announcement, “continues to become a larger portion of everyday commerce: between 2024 and 2026, cryptocurrency payment users in the US are expected to grow by 82%.”

SoFi is even more interesting to watch because it now operates with a regulated bank charter. In November, the bank became the first and only nationally chartered, FDIC-insured institution to offer consumers crypto trading on a bank-grade platform. In August, SoFi also announced a partnership to provide U.S. customers with fast, low-cost cross-border payments to more than 30 countries by leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning network.

“Data shows 60% of SoFi [10 million] members who own crypto would prefer to buy, sell, and hold their crypto with a licensed bank over their primary crypto exchange,” the fintech-turned-bank says, “a clear signal of the confidence consumers place in regulated institutions and SoFi’s unique position to meet this demand head-on.”

SoFi now plans to weave blockchain throughout its offering, introduce a USD stablecoin, and integrate crypto into its lending and infrastructure services. It will then use efficiencies from that investment to provide lower-cost borrowing, faster payments, and new embedded financial capabilities.

Following Memberships’ Lead 

Jed Meyer
President and CEO, St. Cloud Financial Credit Union
St. Cloud, Minn.
Asset size: $440 million 

In September 2025, St. Cloud Financial Credit Union announced it would issue Cloud Dollar ($CLDUSD), the nation’s first credit union-issued stablecoin supported by Metallicus, the core developer of the Metal Blockchain, and DaLand CUSO, which integrates digital asset custody, transactions, and lending directly into existing core systems. 

SCFCU’s announcement of Cloud Dollar mentions it’s a “natural progression” of the credit union’s “Digital Asset Vault strategy.” Did you start with other digital assets before your stablecoin launch? 

They’re different use cases. Cloud Dollar is a stablecoin, so it’s a much more direct bridge between traditional and decentralized finance because it’s tied to the dollar. Our earlier work focused on education, secure storage, and, eventually, transaction rails for multiple digital assets. Cloud Dollar rose to the top later because stablecoins are easier for people to understand, easier to explain from a regulatory standpoint, and useful for practical settlement. 

What were the strategic reasons that drew SCFCU to get involved in digital assets in the first place? 

We got involved because we saw this becoming material to member behavior. We are already seeing between three and five percent of our deposits moving into digital asset ecosystems, and once that money leaves, it is very difficult to bring back.  

I believe we have to do work before members force us to react. If we wait until demand is obvious, we have to drop everything and scramble. I wanted us to study this early as a member strategy, a relevance strategy, and a long-term survival strategy for community financial institutions. 

We also can’t keep paying lip service to cooperative structures. We can’t just say we’re nicer, a little cheaper, and a little friendlier if we expect that to work long term. We have to actually figure out how to get the cooperative model out on the open road. It’s an amazing tool. It’s like a Lamborghini, but credit unions tend to drive it around the neighborhood. The question is how to get it out on the open road, and that’s the path I wanted to take. 

Why not just partner with an outside crypto company and let them handle it? 

Because outsourcing the member relationship is exactly what I don’t want to do. If I send my members to a third party, I’m giving away the relationship, the data, and the long-term franchise value. I’d rather use the best technology stack I already have, my core and the protections around it, and extend that into this space. That way, we keep trust, oversight, and strategic control. 

How did you realize there were limits to growth in your local market and that you needed a new strategy for member acquisition? 

In 2019, we held a meeting to review our market position in St. Cloud. At the time, we had around 25,000 members in a market of about 200,000 people, with roughly 40 financial institutions competing. We perform well, but at some point, there is a natural cap on market penetration. When you’re one institution among many, you eventually reach a ceiling. That forces you to ask whether you can continue growing the same way or whether you need to find a different path to gain new business. 

What strategic priorities came out of that realization? 

One priority was becoming more customized in how we serve our community. We created councils composed of members from Latino, Somali, East African, and African American groups to better understand and serve different populations. The second priority that emerged from that work was digital assets. 

Before building anything in digital assets, how did you prepare your team and organization? 

We brought in a company with strong expertise and embedded them into our executive team. We completed over 1,000 hours of leadership training, and I also led training sessions for our board. The goal was to prepare for the future and build understanding early, rather than waiting until we were forced to react. 

Instead of trying to pick the right cryptocurrency, how did you approach building infrastructure? 

We decided to build technology that serves as an off-balance-sheet ledger integrated with our existing systems, allowing members to securely store their crypto keys. What we built is essentially a gateway or bridge. Today, technology can quickly connect a modern core system to a digital ledger network. The focus was not on picking a winning asset, but on building infrastructure that lets us participate as the space evolves. 

From a CEO perspective, how do you think about crypto strategically? 

I’m not approaching this as a crypto enthusiast chasing something new. I view it as a member acquisition strategy and an extension of what a credit union does. It’s not an all-in strategy. We are focused on serving our community, starting with education, then storage, and eventually transactions as the industry and regulation mature. 

Credit unions fundamentally serve as a liquidity pool and a centralized ledger. In a decentralized world, both of those roles are challenged because technology can replace them. That reality forces us to rethink where we add value. 

What moment made you realize this technology could fundamentally change how money moves? 

When I realized I could move money over the Bitcoin Lightning Network in seconds, at a fraction of the cost, and with greater security, it became clear that this type of technology would be adopted. I may not know exactly when, but the direction is obvious. 

There is still a role for an intermediary, and that creates a major opportunity. Credit unions are member-owned and trust-based institutions. That positions us to be the best type of intermediary in this environment. This is not something we should ignore. It’s a space where credit unions should actively participate and lead.

Envisioning Purpose-Built Applications

Wade Peery
Senior Advisor, FirstBank
Nashville, Tenn.
Asset size: $16.3 billion

In March, the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) tapped Peery to help lead education and inform solution design for community bank digital asset custody, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and the broader digital asset ecosystem.

How should banks think about digital currency?

If you separate the crypto aspect from the technology for a second, and you think about what’s the best way to accomplish something with a piece of technology, then you begin to realize very quickly how incredibly valuable a distributed ledger can be. If multiple entities can share a single ledger, fewer systems are involved in any process or procedure.

If you can get an immutable record from that for all eyes to see, the process becomes less costly.

Community bankers are talking about the term “deposit substitution.” How does that affect their institutions?

You’ll hear the term deposit substitution. And what that simply means is, if you think about every dollar that is translated over to a stablecoin, that coin now really is a substitute for $1. Every digital wallet that holds a stablecoin is now used as a substitute for a checking account, so you’re setting up a system outside the banking system that has the potential to draw deposits away and convert them into tokenized versions.

What becomes problematic is what’s happening behind the scenes. I mentioned that any issuer of a stablecoin has to maintain a one-to-one reserve; that’s the requirement. But those reserves don’t all have to be held in cash. They can be held in U.S. Treasuries with maturities of less than 89 days, or at least that’s what’s written today.

So if you think about projections that say there could be $2 trillion in stablecoins, and you take that $2 trillion out of the money supply and aggregate it into a small number of banks that can serve those issuers, you start to constrain credit on Main Street USA. That’s one of my biggest concerns as a community banker. This begins to move into the realm of JPMorgan Chase-sized institutions.

What is a community bank’s place in serving customers who use digital currencies?

I think that’s a great question. The reality is, it’s not that complicated. What we need to figure out is how to orchestrate all the moving parts. If you’re going to enable your customer to receive a stablecoin and serve as the conduit to convert it into cash, then you need to offer a digital wallet alongside their checking account. You also have to take on counterparty risk for the coin itself so you can liquidate it and return cash to the customer.

What community bankers will need is a more turnkey solution that handles orchestration, key management, custody services, compliance, and all the supporting components that are currently beyond our capabilities.

From our perspective, we have to ask: what happens when a customer says, “I just started getting paid in stablecoin?” or “Square allows me to be paid in Bitcoin?” What do we do then? We’ll need to educate that customer. The answer will either be, “We have a solution for you,” or, “You’ll need to set up an account with Coinbase or another exchange, send your funds there, and convert them back into dollars.” But by the time you pay wire fees and other costs, you could lose a meaningful portion of that money.

Those are the problems we have to solve.

What I think you’ll see is a wave of purpose-built applications. Think payroll systems, real estate closings, construction draw funding, you can go down the list. These are areas where stablecoins are well-suited because you can have a trusted source authorize a transaction and then automate everything downstream.

For crypto in particular, what should community bankers be considering?

I think banks are going to be forced to adopt and adapt in some way. Otherwise, they face a significant competitive disadvantage. Some bankers still think, “Crypto isn’t something I need to worry about,” but this isn’t really about crypto. It’s about the underlying technology and the very real use cases it enables.

If you think about our historical systems, ACH, wire, and now FedNow, which is still in its infancy, all of that has been done through siloed systems. There are significant opportunities to improve speed and efficiency dramatically.

We also have to learn how to measure and manage that counterparty risk more effectively. If customers want to own Bitcoin and have us custody those assets, that won’t be a massive operational leap, because I think third-party vendors will ultimately develop much of that infrastructure.