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Circles

What we’ve been playing – “enjoy the rest of your evening going around in circles and dying lots”

by admin September 13, 2025

13th September

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, we’ve been banging our heads on Hollow Knight Silksong and trying to decide, for the most part, whether we love it or not. One moment we do, one moment we don’t. But that’s not all we’ve been playing. Tom’s been struggling with technology again, Bertie’s fallen down another rabbit hole, and Dom dug out the old Final Fantasy Tactics ahead of the remastered one’s late September arrival.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

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Hollow Knight Silksong, Xbox Series X

The other night, I let my children watch me play Silksong before they went to bed. They probably sat with me for about 20 minutes before I paused to tuck them in. “Goodnight my love, sleep well,” I said to my daughter. She replied, with complete sincerity: “Goodnight Mama, enjoy the rest of your evening going around in circles and dying lots.”

She wasn’t wrong.

-Victoria

Final Fantasy Tactics, PS1 (via emulator)

Ahead of the re-release of Final Fantasy Tactics, I’ve been replaying the original and revelling in how timely, how important and how beautiful a story Yasumi Matsuno concocted back in 1997. Nearly 30 years old and more relevant than ever, this game – set in Ivalice, the best Final Fantasy setting by the way – examines the importance of resistance. It examines what it looks like to be radicalised in a world that strives to separate people. It studies the necessity of violence in revolution. It does not shy away from the responsibility of those that hold a platform. I think the re-release has accidentally happened upon some remarkable timing, here, and I can’t wait for more people to play this timeless gem. I think it’s one of the most important games of my lifetime.

-Dom

Prologue: Go Wayback! PC

That weather! That environment! All procedurally generated. I’ve got lots of thoughts. It’s fascinating.Watch on YouTube

An orienteering game made by the creator of PUBG? Um, okay then. But actually it’s much more than that. And actually, an orienteering game is right up my street. Prologue: Go Wayback is more of a technical demo in reality. A proof of concept of some industry-shaking tech Brendan Greene, the creator of PUBG, has been spearheading at newish studio PlayerUnknown Productions. His broad goal: procedural worlds – a familiar pipe dream. Prologue: Go Wayback is the planetary-level glimpse of it in action, and it’s an exciting one. I love stuff like this. I love big ideas. Expect more coverage to come!

-Bertie

Steam Deck, Steam Deck

I’m glad we’re writing short little updates in this article now, as otherwise you’d have to read two or more paragraphs on how I’ve spent about six hours (more or less all my free-time over the course of a week) trying to sort out a Steam Deck that was stuck updating. My tip is this: just leave it for as long as you can, and then it might just “blip” into life at 3am while you’re trying to sleep!

-Tom O

Crow Country, PC

Crow Country trailer.Watch on YouTube

I’ll level with you. I’m still playing No Man’s Sky and faffing around with its shiny new customisable Corvettes, but that’s probably not something you need to hear me go on about for the third weekend in a row. Instead, a quick thing on the only other game I’ve had time for this week: Crow Country. Eurogamer contributor (and horror connoisseur) Vikki Blake was a big fan of this when she reviewed it last year, so it’s been on my list for a while. Essentially, it’s a bit of a riff on the old survival horrors of yore, its retro-inspired aesthetic helping give the whole thing a wonderfully uncanny feel. 20 minutes in, I’m yet to see a single crow, but its abandoned theme park setting – lovingly rendered in an artstyle that feels more Little Big Adventure than it does Resident Evil – is a treat, and I’m excited to play more.

-Matt

Hollow Knight Silksong, Switch 2

The first 10 or so hours of Silksong were sublime: the atmosphere beautiful, the writing elegant, the boss battles nicely pitched. I was in love. But since then that love has turned to hatred. I’ve got stuck on bosses with infuriating runbacks. I’ve screamed at tiny critters placed at just the wrong location for maximum frustration. I’ve felt helpless against extensive gauntlets. And then I go back to exploring, I beat a boss at last, and marvel at the beautiful presentation of yet another inventive environment. I have a real love/hate thing going with Silksong. But that’s the Soulslike way, right?

-Ed

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Circle’s USDC Market Share ‘On a Tear,’ Says Wall Street Broker Bernstein

by admin September 8, 2025

Hyperliquid is planning to launch its own stablecoin, in a move that could reduce the decentralized exchange’s (DEX) dependency on Circle’s USDC.

In spite of these fears, USDC supply has surged to $72.5 billion, running 25% ahead of Wall Street broker Bernstein’s 2025 estimates. The firm had predicted that the stablecoin’s supply would reach $74 billion by year-end.

The stablecoin’s market share is “on a tear,” wrote analysts led by Gautam Chhugani in a Tuesday report.

Market share relative to Tether, issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin USDT, has also grown to 30%, up from 28% in the second quarter, the broker said.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is tied to another asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold. They play a major role in cryptocurrency markets, providing among other things a payment infrastructure, and are also used to transfer money internationally.

The report noted that $5.5 billion in USDC (about 7.5% of supply) is currently used as collateral on Hyperliquid. While the exchange’s move introduces competition, it will be challenging to bootstrap sufficient liquidity for a new stablecoin in derivatives markets where execution reliability and sizing are critical, the analysts wrote.

Bernstein said that following the GENIUS Act, new stablecoin entrants are inevitable. However, liquidity bootstrapping for derivatives is non-trivial.

Concerns about Circle’s exposure to rate cuts (since lower interest income could impact revenues) miss the bigger picture, according to Bernstein analysts, as the stablecoin issuer benefits from expanding USDC supply.

Rate cuts could even support risk-on sentiment in digital assets, spurring further demand for USDC and related yield strategies, the report added.

Bernstein has an outperform rating on Circle shares, with a $230 price target. The stock was trading 1.2% higher, around $116, at publication time.

Read more: Circle Unveils Layer-1 Blockchain Arc, Reports $428 Million Q2 Loss

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September 8, 2025 0 comments

Chainlink CEO and co-founder Sergey Nazarov

NFT Gaming

How Stripe’s Tempo and Circle’s Arc Fail the Decentralization Test, Explains Libra Co-Creator

by admin September 7, 2025

Christian Catalini, co-creator of Facebook’s Libra project, warned on Friday that Stripe’s Tempo and Circle’s Arc could succeed commercially but at the cost of crypto’s decentralization ideal.

Launched in 2019, Libra was Meta’s bold bid to create a global digital currency backed by a basket of stable assets. The project promised to make payments as seamless as messaging, but it triggered immediate backlash from regulators concerned about financial sovereignty, systemic risk, and user privacy. By 2022, Libra — renamed Diem in a bid to reset its image — was shuttered and its assets sold off.

Catalini, who served as Libra’s chief economist, used his Sept. 5 thread on X to revisit the project’s early compromises and explain why they matter now. He said the original open design, developed with Harvard economist Scott Kominers, was reduced to a short appendix after months of regulatory negotiations.

The first major retreat, he wrote, was abandoning non-custodial wallets. Regulators insisted on a “clear perimeter,” meaning a responsible intermediary they could contact — and penalize — if problems arose.

For supervisors used to intermediated finance, a world where users truly held their own money was unmanageable. “For them, killing self-custody wasn’t a choice, it was an obvious necessity,” he recalled.

Catalini noted the irony: today, open networks are developing compliance tools native to blockchain that could have addressed these concerns more effectively than traditional frameworks. But back then, Libra was forced to strip away decentralization, a change he described as an early signal of where corporate-led projects were heading.

His broader lesson was stark: “As long as there is a single throat to choke — or a committee of them — you can’t truly rewire the system. Worse, any network with an architect is living on borrowed time.”

Arc and Tempo in the Spotlight

Catalini placed Stripe’s Tempo and Circle’s Arc in that context. Both are new blockchains designed explicitly for payments, promoted as stablecoin-first infrastructure for enterprises and fintechs.

Circle launched Arc on Aug. 12, presenting it as a Layer-1 network purpose-built for stablecoin finance. Unlike public chains that rely on volatile gas tokens, Arc uses USDC for fees, offering predictable, dollar-denominated costs.

It integrates a built-in foreign exchange engine, promises sub-second finality, and includes opt-in privacy features. Circle said Arc will support cross-border payments, onchain credit systems, tokenized capital markets and programmable, automated payments.

Just weeks later, Stripe and Paradigm unveiled Tempo on Sept. 4, describing it as a payments-first blockchain capable of handling over 100,000 transactions per second.

The network is EVM-compatible, features a dedicated payments lane with support for memos and access lists, and allows users to pay both transactions and gas in any stablecoin. Stripe said early design partners include Visa, Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Nubank, Shopify, OpenAI, Anthropic and DoorDash.

Both projects were marketed as steps toward mainstreaming stablecoin payments. But for Catalini, they raised a deeper concern.

A Revolution or a Failed Coup?

Catalini argued that corporate-led chains like Arc and Tempo risk simply rebuilding the old financial system with new players in charge. Instead of displacing card networks and banks, he warned, they could elevate fintech giants to the same position of dominance. “The throne will have new occupants, but it will be the same throne,” he wrote.

He also predicted such networks would fracture geopolitically, with Western and Eastern blocs unlikely to share a single corporate-led infrastructure. The result, he said, would be competing financial empires rather than the borderless system crypto’s early advocates envisioned.

Ultimately, Catalini described Stripe’s Tempo as a “referendum on the ghost of Libra.” If it thrives, he suggested, it may prove Libra failed because of timing, not design — and show that the dream of open, permissionless money has been overtaken by more pragmatic, centralized solutions.

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September 7, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

You’re listening to Vatican radio, or at least you can with freshly DLCed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s latest patch

by admin September 5, 2025

Oh, throw me in an ancient tomb and lob some snakes down there for good measure, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle got some DLC this week. I can’t imagine why that might have flown under the radar a bit. Anyway, the Order of Giants has brought with it a patch that makes a few noteworthy additions to the base game.

Watch on YouTube

Getting right into it, Indy update five adds a new “Very Light action experience” difficulty option aimed at folks who “prefer to be challenged by the exploration and puzzle solving, and prefer not to find the combat too challenging”. Tell your nan who likes visiting historical sites and doing crosswords, now’s her chance to whip some Nazis in a video game.

That’s one of these few additions, but the main one that’s piqued my attention’s this: “New Radio MCs have been added to the Jazz and Opera radio stations found on radio sets in Marshall College and the Vatican. You can also now tune the Vatican radio sets to hear news broadcasts that cover the events from around the game’s world.”

That’s a cool touch, being able to turn a knob and hear about what that knob Voss is doing from the 1940s Italian equivalent of those dorks on BBC radio four. Beyond that, Machine Games have whipped out some extra-swanky ray tracing for Indy’s hair, via support for RTX Hair on 50-series Nvidia RTX GPUs. “We recommend enabling this feature only on higher-end GPUs with 16GB of VRAM or more,” they wrote. That’s you told, no uber-luscious trim fidelity for those without top hardware.

The final new feature’s a little tweak to the inventory screen that’ll let you know which of your outfits will act as safe disguises for the area in which you’re standing, and which will instantly alert the guards that there’s a Harrison Ford sneaking around. For all the bug fixes and minor tweaks, you can check out update five’s full notes here.

Our Brendy wrote the following in his Indy review:

Machine Games have reproduced the experience of the Lucasfilm movies in a 99% accurate form. And they have done so in a manner only a megafunded Bethesda studio with a lot of Nazi-killing experience could. Yes, the video gamey seams stand out as you scarf down croissants for health and hear another bigot coughing behind a wall. But just as I’m not interested in Baker’s performance reaching some unobtainable ledge of authenticity, I also don’t want my adventure to abandon the language of games where it doesn’t make sense to do so. I’m happy for this to be exactly the kind of expensive, cinematic, blockbuster explorathon it seemed predestined to be. Sneeze away, little Nazi. I know where you are.

Oh wait. If I’ve got Vatican FM, the holy city’s haven for the hottest hymns and coolest choirs, turned up to max, will I still be able to hear the telltale bodily noises of Hitler’s goons?

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Circle’s Arc to Launch with Fireblocks Integration as Stablecoin Race Intensifies

by admin August 18, 2025

Circle’s new layer-1 blockchain Arc will integrate with Fireblocks, a New York–based digital asset custody and tokenization platform serving more than 2,400 banks, asset managers and fintechs. Arc is not yet live, but Circle plans to roll out a public testnet this fall ahead of a full launch by year-end.

Fireblocks said it prepares custody and compliance support so clients can transact on Arc once the network launches. Its platform supports over 120 blockchains and facilitates settlement for institutions across global markets.

Source: Fireblocks

The unusually early integration drew some criticism on X. Solana, for example, launched in 2020, but wasn’t added to Fireblocks until late 2021, after its ecosystem reached critical mass. Arc will instead debut with Fireblocks integration, giving banks and asset managers “day one” access.

Related: Stablecoins will soon have their ‘iPhone moment,’ Circle CEO

Moving along with US stablecoin regulations

While US regulators advanced clarity around stablecoins with the GENIUS Act signed on July 18, Circle has been expanding its footprint.

On June 5, Circle raised $1.05 billion in the first IPO by a stablecoin issuer. Shares opened at $69, climbed as high as $103.75, and closed at $83.23 — a gain of 168% from the IPO price. The stock reached as high as $298.99 on July 23, and is currently trading around $145.

The company’s first earnings report since going public was released on Tuesday, reporting $658 million in Q2 revenue, a 53% increase year-over-year. It said circulation of USDC grew 90% over the same period, reaching $61.3 billion by June 30 and climbing above $65 billion in early August.

That same day, Circle moved to expand its payments infrastructure with the launch of the Circle Payments Network, and announced Arc — describing it as a layer 1 purpose-built chain for “stablecoin finance.”

While Circle was ahead of the curve with its IPO, the Arc announcement comes amid a broader wave of new blockchain launches, including Stripe developing Tempo with Paradigm and Robinhood rolling out a tokenization-focused L2 in June.

Related: USDC stablecoin launches on XRP Ledger

Stablecoin rivals drive market growth

The stablecoin market cap now stands at roughly $277.16 billion, up from $253.87 billion on July 1, according to data from DefiLlama. While Circle’s USDC accounts for about a quarter of the fiat-backed stablecoin market, Tether continues to dominate globally with around 60% market share.

Tether reported $4.9 billion in profit in Q2 2025, a 277% increase compared with the same period a year earlier. Most of that profit came from Treasury yields, with the company’s $127 billion short-term US debt generating steady income.

Tether has now become one of the largest non-sovereign holders of US Treasurys, surpassing countries such as South Korea and the UAE, an unprecedented position for a private company.

Magazine: Bitcoin vs stablecoins showdown looms as GENIUS Act nears

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Circle’s Jeremy Allaire on GENIUS Act: ‘Internet of Money Has Arrived’

by admin August 18, 2025

Jeremy Allaire, cofounder of Circle, the company behind USDC stablecoin, has dropped a motivational post on X. Allaire emphasized the importance of persistence in the cryptocurrency industry in the post. He did this by highlighting his role in the birth of the GENIUS Act.

Jeremy Allaire reflects on Circle’s early struggles

The Circle CEO recalled how many stakeholders, including investors, regulators and even family members, doubted him when he conceived the idea of Circle in 2013. According to him, the idea that money could move just like information on the internet, cheaply, instantly and globally, was unbelievable to many.

Circle’s market position

Circle currently ranks second on the stablecoin market, with a market capitalization of $68.14 billion. It is surpassed only by Tether, whose market cap stands at $166.81 billion.