CIRCLE'S TAZAPAY ACQUISITION IS REALLY ABOUT BUYING AN OFF-RAMP FOR USDC

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

By tracing on-chain flows behind Circle's September 8 announcement to acquire Tazapay, a Singapore B2B cross-border payments firm, it seems about a third of Tazapay's payout business is already funded in USDC (up from under 10% in June), with monthly redemptions into Circle hitting $562 million in the first 25 days of September. Circle isn't buying a future USDC channel but a client that already burns over half a billion dollars of USDC monthly through Circle Mint plus the fiat off-ramp rails on the other side, since Tazapay's product is one-directional (stablecoin in, fiat out) with almost no on-chain revenue (2 basis points). The real business is the FX spread at the off-ramp, not the blockchain layer itself.