Crypto Markets Are Seeing Red This Black Friday Despite Payments Push

This time last year, bitcoin was topping $90,000 and flirting with all-time-high valuations. For cryptocurrency traders and blockchain maximalists, the Thanksgiving dinner table was likely one full of braggadocio and “I told you so’s” as they urged their family members not to miss out on the crypto rush, carried away by a shared sense of optimism that digital assets were finally entering a durable mainstream era.

This Thanksgiving, the mood may be a little more subdued. Market volatility in recent weeks has erased nearly all of the market’s gains this year. Relatives that bought at the top of the market cycle could be feeling as bitter as any homemade cranberry sauce.

But in an unexpected twist, market enthusiasm has not been the dominant theme of the 2025 holiday season. Instead, a wave of infrastructure-focused announcements from payment giants, wallet providers, and ecommerce platforms suggests that while sentiment has cooled, the technical groundwork for everyday crypto spending is accelerating faster than ever.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken on Tuesday (Nov. 25) introduced a Mastercard debit app in the U.K. and EU. Block, the payments company that owns Square and Cash App, has introduced bitcoin payment capability for 4 million merchants through its Square Bitcoin feature. Fintech Klarna is launching a payments stablecoin.

And on Monday (Nov. 24), Exodus Movement, Inc. a self-custodial cryptocurrency platform, made public its agreement to acquire Monavate and its two subsidiaries, Baanx.com Ltd. and Baanx US Corp, as part of Exodus’s stated plan to enter the on-chain payments landscape by becoming one of the few self-custodial wallets to control the end-to-end payments experience, from wallets to cards.

For an industry long defined by dramatic boom-and-bust cycles, this quiet, infrastructure-heavy moment feels almost countercultural. But it may be the most important step yet toward moving cryptocurrency from high-end novelty purchases like Ferraris and multimillion-dollar real estate and into the ordinary, lower-margin world where most holiday sales happen.

The question this year is whether that infrastructure is enough to push crypto payments beyond the luxury markets where they first gained traction, more as a like-kind value transfer than scalable payment mechanism.

Read more: What Are Consumers Buying With Crypto This Black Friday?

Merchant Integration and the Push for Usability

The infrastructure for crypto payments has matured far faster than consumer adoption. Ecommerce integrations have expanded sharply, especially across Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce shops. For many smaller retailers, adding crypto is now as easy as installing a plugin, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

Instead of chasing speculative features, companies are focusing on checkout experience, compliance and interoperability.

Most retailers treat crypto not as a headline opportunity but as a long-tail enhancement. They don’t expect crypto spending to dominate. They don’t build marketing campaigns around it. Instead, crypto acceptance functions like PayPal or Klarna once did in their early days: an incremental option that might convert a few extra shoppers, especially those buying internationally or operating outside traditional banking rails.

For all the progress, the central challenge remains unresolved: can crypto payments truly move downstream into everyday purchases?

Read more: Why the Future of Blockchain Payments Could Stay Narrow

UX Improvements Still Can’t Solve the Crypto Tax Problem

The consolidation across the wallet landscape has created more polished and seamless payment experiences. Multi-chain support, stablecoin rails, QR-based checkout and Shopify integrations have all brought crypto closer to the convenience shoppers have come to expect from other payment mechanisms.

But the limiting factor for crypto payments is inherently regulatory in nature. Under current IRS rules, spending cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, is legally identical to disposing of an investment. Each payment serves as a taxable event, requiring documentation and potentially triggering capital gains liability.

“When you pay with bitcoin, it’s treated as like selling a stock or an investment,” Janessa Lopez, head of Digital Assets Policy at Block, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Nov. 18.  “You’re hit with a capital gains tax and a tax form, which makes using Bitcoin to pay for things like coffee or dinner really difficult and burdensome.”

This makes crypto payments uniquely unsuited for low-value, high-frequency transactions, the heart of Black Friday sales.

The friction isn’t in the checkout process; it’s in the post-purchase paperwork. That’s why Block launched “Bitcoin is Everyday Money,” a campaign advocating for a de minimis tax exemption designed to modernize how bitcoin is treated under U.S. tax law.

Against the present-day backdrop, stablecoin payments, in particular, have surged because they function more like digital cash. They do not typically expose the consumer to capital gains complexities, and their dollar denominations make them intuitive for merchants.

This Black Friday, crypto will appear in checkout flows across electronics, fashion, travel, subscription services, and indie online storefronts. But the volume will likely come from stablecoins, not bitcoin.