Traditional finance is not waiting for crypto to mature. It is building the rails itself, and the infrastructure being laid this week suggests the convergence is structural, not cyclical.

Tether's market cap has just reached an all-time high of USD 188 billion, even as Circle's USDC grew at a slower pace. The divergence is not random noise, it is a behavioral signal from Decentralized Finance (DeFi) users that has not yet received sufficient analytical attention.