Staff Software Engineer

Whop has launched Whop Finance, a suite of financial tools for internet businesses, starting with Whop Treasury. The product allows businesses to earn up to 6% APY on funds with real-time accrual, no minimum lockups, and full liquidity maintained at all times. Whop Treasury enables self-custody with biometric passkey authorisation. Revenue from Whop Payments Network can automatically transfer into Treasury accounts, generating yield immediately. Funds are held in USDT on Plasma blockchain, with Tether providing the underlying currency infrastructure. Yield generation is powered by Aave, whilst MoonPay handles deposits. The platform facilitates over $3 billion in annual payouts across 144 countries. Future plans include support for Bitcoin and Ethereum, aiming to create a single platform for earning, holding, growing and spending money online.

Tether believes AI agents will become the primary users of stablecoins within 15 years. February 28, 2026 Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and co-founder Reeve Collins have outlined a vision in which autonomous AI agents become the dominant users of stablecoin infrastructure, arguing that traditional banking systems are structurally incapable of serving non-human entities and that USDT and Bitcoin will fill that gap by default. The core argument. The reasoning Ardoino and Collins have presented is grounded in a practical observation about how banking works. Traditional financial institutions like JPMorgan require account holders to be legal entities or individuals who can satisfy KYC requirements, sign contracts, and be held accountable under existing legal frameworks. An autonomous AI agent cannot do any of those things. It has no legal personhood, no identity documents, and no human representative capable of assuming liability on its behalf. That structural incompatibility means that as AI agents proliferate and begin requiring financial infrastructure to operate, they will not be able to access traditional banking rails. Stablecoins on permissionless blockchains, by contrast, require nothing beyond a wallet address to send and receive value. The account opens itself. No approval needed. The operational requirements of AI agents compound the argument. These systems run continuously, execute at machine speed, and need to make micropayments for compute power, data access, and API services in real time. Traditional finance operates on business hours, settlement delays, and transaction minimums that are architecturally incompatible with those requirements. Blockchain infrastructure, running 24 hours a day at high throughput, is not. What Tether is building. The strategic response to this thesis is visible in the infrastructure Tether has been developing and investing in across recent months. The Wallet Development Kit, launched as an open-source modular framework, was built specifically for what Tether describes as "people, machines, and AI agents." It enables the creation of non-custodial wallets that can be embedded into any software or device, which means an AI agent could instantiate its own wallet as part of its deployment without any human involvement in the setup process. On February 25th, Tether invested $200 million in Whop, a digital marketplace platform, with a stated goal of implementing AI tools that enable what the company calls agentic income opportunities. The framing is notable. Rather than positioning AI agents purely as cost centers consuming compute and API services, the Whop investment suggests Tether is building toward a model where agents also generate income autonomously. Earlier in February, Tether invested in LayerZero Labs to support USDt0, its omnichain stablecoin designed to operate seamlessly across multiple blockchains without liquidity fragmentation. For AI agents moving value across different networks as part of their operations, that kind of cross-chain interoperability is not a convenience feature. It is a basic operational requirement. The risk Ardoino is also flagging. Tether's leadership has not presented this vision without caveats. Ardoino has publicly warned about what he describes as a bitcoin AI risk for 2026, specifically the possibility that a bursting AI stock bubble could create risk-off conditions across financial markets that temporarily drag down digital asset prices alongside equities. The warning is worth taking seriously precisely because it comes from someone with a strong financial interest in the bull case for both Bitcoin and stablecoins. Ardoino is not dismissing the technology. He is acknowledging that valuation excess in AI-adjacent equities could produce a correction that sweeps crypto into the same risk-off move regardless of the underlying fundamentals. The scale of the prediction. Industry observers and Tether executives have put a number on the long-term vision: one trillion AI agents using self-custodial wallets and stablecoins within fifteen years. That figure is more illustrative than precise, but the direction it points is clear. If even a fraction of that adoption materializes, the demand for stablecoin infrastructure at machine scale would represent a structural shift in what USDT is used for and who, or what, is using it. The financial system was not designed for non-human participants. Tether is building on the assumption that it will need to be. Disclaimer: ETHNews does not endorse and is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products, or other materials on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to cryptocurrencies. ETHNews is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods, or services mentioned.

Crypto startup funding hits $883M in February as VC pace cools. 28 February 2026 updated 28 February 2026 Crypto startups pulled in about $883 million of disclosed funding in February, a 13% year-over-year decline. The number matters because it frames the market's risk appetite in a way price charts do not. When venture inflows slow, runway pressure rises for early-stage teams, and narrative-driven fundraising becomes harder to sustain. The February's print also lands during a choppy tape. In that environment, investors often tighten process, demand clearer paths to revenue, and avoid sectors that depend on fast liquidity or reflexive token momentum. The month looks smaller, but the checks are not evenly distributed. A key feature of February is concentration. A few outsized rounds can dominate the month, masking a thinner long tail of smaller raises. One example is Flying Tulip, linked to DeFi architect Andre Cronje, which raised $206 million. In months like this, one large deal can shift the headline total by itself, even if the broader market sees fewer seed and Series A commitments. Another example is Whop, which secured a $200 million strategic investment from Tether at a reported $1.6 billion valuation, putting stablecoin distribution and payments adjacency squarely in the funding spotlight. A third anchor deal is Anchorage Digital's $100 million strategic investment from Tether, with a stated valuation of $4.2 billion, underscoring continued interest in regulated custody and institutional rails. Taken together, these deals help explain how a month can show a softer headline while still featuring very large checks. Capital does not disappear, it clusters. Why it matters. Funding is a slow-moving indicator of market structure. A weaker month can signal that investors expect higher volatility ahead, or that they see fewer clear edge cases where product-market fit offsets token or liquidity risk. When venture capital cools, three second-order effects tend to show up. First, teams shift from growth-at-all-costs to efficiency, reducing hiring and marketing intensity. That reduces near-term ecosystem activity, especially for new apps that depend on incentive spend. Second, deal terms tighten. Investors push for lower entry valuations, stronger downside protection, and clearer governance, which can reduce the number of announced rounds even when capital remains available. Third, sector selection gets sharper. February's larger checks tilt toward stablecoin-linked distribution and regulated infrastructure, which suggests a preference for cash-flow visibility, compliance footing, and integration with real-world payments rather than pure speculative beta. Data notes and what this figure actually represents. Monthly venture totals vary depending on how a tracker defines "crypto startup," how it timestamps rounds, and whether it includes only announced deals. The funding figure in circulation for February aligns with aggregated "raises" style datasets, where totals are typically built from publicly reported rounds and then grouped by month. DeFiLlama dataset is explicit about methodology and bias factors, including what gets included and what tends to be undercounted, such as undisclosed rounds or deals without public confirmation. For programmatic verification, the public raises endpoint can be used to cross-check individual entries and dates.