Western Union, Visa, PayPal, Meta: Why Major Payments Giants Are Racing to Solana

Kyle Samani, co-founder of Forward, breaks down his latest deal on the main stage at Solana, a minority stake in Henri, a reinsurance RWA yielding 12-13%, funded by a Galaxy debt facility at 3.5%. He makes the case for why Solana has quietly become the dominant chain for institutional payments, tokenized equities, and real world assets. From Western Union and Visa to Meta and PayPal, the biggest names in finance are all building on the same rails. Plus, why he thinks most altcoins are bleeding out, Ethereum L2s are in trouble, and why this bear market might be the best investing opportunity in crypto right now. - Timecodes: 00:00 - Kyle Samani at Consensus Miami 2026 02:08 - Bear Markets Are Where Winners Are Born 03:30 - Why Solana Is Winning Payments and RWAs 06:00 - DTCC's Tokenized Equities Pilot and SEC's Project Crypto 08:48 - Building a Market Maker With Claude Code 10:00 - Agentic Payments and the x402 Protocol 13:46 - Why Institutions Pick Public Chains Over Walled Gardens 15:43 - Why Solana: Gas, On-Ramps, Neutrality 17:21 - Are Ethereum L2s in Trouble? - #cryptocurrency #digitalfinance #finance #bitcoin #crypto Subscribe to CoinDesk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CoinDesk?sub_confirmation=1 CoinDesk is the leading digital media, events and information services company for the crypto asset and blockchain technology community. Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/coindesk LinkedIn: https://www.din.com/company/coindesk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coindesk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoinDesk Newsletters: https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters CoinDesk Podcast Network: https://open.spotify.com/show/2jyIhkvAQhed8AWDZiPpSP Public Keys: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rqYzRV10nfKfoTpFXZhTE Markets Daily Crypto Roundup: https://open.spotify.com/show/7sDXM8BlxsUqzL2IqmLqwE The Policy Protocol: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Fh8ffulAWcCqMu0uVuwoj