You never see the most important part of any of your payments. When an app says your money moved, a number changes on your screen, and the transaction looks and feels finished.
But underneath those interfaces lies a separate, invisible chain of bank reserves, settlement accounts, and Fed infrastructure that determines when your funds actually clear, who controls that settlement, and which institutions are allowed to participate in it at all.
For crypto payments, that underlying system has been off-limits. Exchanges and crypto companies have had to route all of their dollar payments through partner banks, which handled the actual settlement with the Federal Reserve on their behalf. When those…
