This week’s highlights:

This week, Coinbase hosted a WWDC-scale system upgrade, rolling out new capabilities across trading, derivatives, stablecoins, AI, and payment protocols. Its vision of an “Everything Exchange” signals more than super-app ambition—it points to a crypto-native financial architecture built around stablecoins, asset issuance, and onchain settlement.

In this model, finance starts to resemble internet bandwidth: a base-layer capability natively callable by software and AI, orchestrated in the background. Stablecoins shift from investable assets to core digital infrastructure. From this perspective, Coinbase already extends beyond the traditional super-app paradigm, as finance detaches from the app and moves toward “invisible finance.”

At the same time, stablecoin adoption continues to accelerate. On the visible side, ADNOC now accepts stablecoin payments across nearly 1,000 fuel stations, Interactive Brokers supports stablecoin funding, Ramp enables stablecoin-funded paper checks, and YouTube allows U.S. creators to receive payouts in PayPal’s PYUSD.

More consequential changes are happening out of sight. Visa has enabled USDC settlement within the U.S. banking system, allowing select banks to settle directly in USDC on VisaNet—a structural shift at the settlement layer, less visible to users but far more impactful over time.

Total stablecoin market cap reached $308.606b, with a week-over-week decrease of $1.456b. In terms of market structure, USDT continues to maintain its dominant position at 60.32%; USDC ranks second with a market cap of $77.336b, accounting for 25.06%.

Blockchain Network Distribution

Top 3 Networks by Stablecoin Market Cap:

1. Ethereum: $166.19b

2. Tron: $80.993b

3. Solana: $16.048b

Top 3 Networks by Weekly Growth:

1. USDD (USDD): +20.29%

2. Resolv USD (USR): +16.97%

3. First Digital USD (FDUSD) : +16.35%

Data from DefiLlama

🎯How Coinbase’s System Upgrade Shows Crypto Is Rewriting the Super App

This week, Coinbase hosted a WWDC-style system upgrade event, unveiling a wide range of new offerings including stock trading, derivatives, prediction markets, Solana DEX integration, enterprise stablecoins, AI investment advisors, and payment protocols. It was the broadest and most structurally significant update in Coinbase’s history, marking a shift from a single-asset platform toward a unified financial entry point.

If the early phase of crypto focused on assets themselves, today’s competition is increasingly about how assets are organized, settled, and managed as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and onchain settlement mature. Coinbase’s answer is to unify stocks, stablecoins, derivatives, and onchain assets under a single account and wallet identity—an approach it calls the “Everything Exchange.”

On the traditional asset side, U.S. users can already trade thousands of stocks and ETFs via Coinbase Capital Markets, settling in USD or USDC, with select equities available for near-24/5 trading. While this still relies on traditional market infrastructure, Coinbase has positioned it as a transitional step toward tokenized equities, with real-world asset issuance planned via Coinbase Tokenize. Outside the U.S., perpetual equity derivatives offer compliant, capital-efficient exposure to U.S. stocks without transferring ownership, creating synthetic markets that aggregate global liquidity around price and risk ahead of full onchain migration.

As account capabilities expand, Coinbase is increasingly consolidating diverse risk types into a single trading and settlement framework:

• Prediction markets: Through its partnership with Kalshi, users can trade election, sports, and economic outcomes using USD or USDC, bringing regulated real-world risk directly into stablecoin settlement.

• Onchain assets and DEXs: Integration with Jupiter, Solana’s largest DEX aggregator, makes assets across Base and Solana accessible within one interface, reducing friction between chains.

• Derivatives and AI advisors: Futures and perpetuals are now embedded in the main app, paired with AI-driven tools that simplify cross-asset risk construction.

Structurally, Coinbase now operates with a clear two-sided model: a consumer-facing Base app that combines trading, wallets, payments, and discovery; and Coinbase Business, which offers stablecoins, corporate accounts, payment APIs, and financial automation. The common denominator across both sides is stablecoin liquidity.

Among all announcements, Custom Stablecoins and the x402 open payment protocol carry the longest-term strategic weight. Custom Stablecoins allow companies to issue branded digital dollars backed 1:1 by USDC and other regulated stablecoins—not bank deposits—placing collateral fully onchain, reducing reliance on banks, and expanding USDC’s circulation. For Coinbase and Circle, this is direct commercial upside; more broadly, it extends dollar liquidity into cross-border payments, onchain economies, and emerging markets.

The x402 protocol pushes this further by embedding stablecoin payments directly into HTTP requests, enabling software and AI agents to transact autonomously. Within 30 days of launch, it surpassed $200 million in annualized volume, underscoring real demand for machine-to-machine payments.

Ultimately, Coinbase is not betting on a traditional financial super app, but on a crypto-native financial structure. User interfaces are only one layer; beneath them sits a supply network defined by stablecoins, enterprise issuance, and onchain settlement. While platforms like Revolut and Cash App are also moving toward unified entry points, Coinbase’s distinction lies in its attempt to control both demand and asset generation—and to couple them through onchain clearing.

If traditional fintech sought to put every financial function into a single app, crypto-native platforms point toward a different end state: making finance natively usable by any application. In this model, stablecoins become a base capability, and crypto finance evolves from an app into a system service—directly callable by software and AI agents.

🎯Visa Enables USDC Settlement: A Key Milestone for Stablecoins at the Banking Settlement Layer

This week, Visa enabled USDC settlement within the U.S. banking system, following a pilot that processed roughly $3.5 billion in annualized volume. Select U.S. banks can now settle obligations on VisaNet directly using Circle’s USDC.

Early participants include Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, with settlement running on Solana. For cardholders and merchants, nothing changes—payments, statements, and payouts look the same. The shift happens behind the scenes, where banks are now moving funds differently.

Until recently, stablecoin “mainstream adoption” largely sat at the payment interface layer. Consumers could pay with stablecoins and merchants could accept them via fintech platforms, but before entering the banking system those stablecoins were typically converted back to fiat and settled through traditional rails. Stablecoins functioned as front-end tools, remaining outside the core financial system.

Visa’s move brings stablecoins into the settlement process itself. Issuing banks no longer need to convert funds back to dollars before settlement; they can clear directly in USDC on VisaNet. This removes constraints tied to business days, batch processing, and holidays, enabling 24/7 interbank settlement.

Why this matters: in modern payments, banks—not consumers—bear the economic responsibility. Every card transaction ultimately lands on the balance sheets of two banks. VisaNet is fundamentally a coordination layer for interbank settlement. Allowing stablecoins to serve as settlement assets shifts their role from payment instruments to banking operations tools.

The result is a reallocation of efficiency. Always-on settlement reduces funds-in-transit, improves liquidity predictability, and lowers precautionary balances. For banks, this directly impacts asset-liability management: the same capital can turn over faster and be allocated more precisely. Settlement efficiency itself becomes a product capability.

This is why stablecoins may not “replace banks,” but they will change how banks operate. As time-based frictions fade, advantages derived from process inertia erode, and differentiation shifts toward liquidity management and capital efficiency.

For Visa, this marks a step from card network toward multi-asset settlement infrastructure. As VisaNet supports both fiat and stablecoin settlement, its value extends beyond acceptance reach to settlement flexibility and temporal continuity. Once stablecoin settlement becomes a standard capability, bank adoption is likely to follow through network effects.

Regulatory Compliance

🏛The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted conditional approval for federal trust bank charters to Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, allowing them to custody client assets but not take deposits or issue loans. New entities such as Circle’s First National Digital Currency Bank and Ripple National Trust Bank are included, providing a clearer regulatory path for compliant stablecoin issuance like RLUSD. Coinbase, Stripe-owned Bridge, and Crypto.com remain under review. Against the backdrop of a more accommodative regulatory stance, crypto firms are accelerating their integration into the U.S. banking system. This move embeds stablecoins and custody more deeply into federal oversight, laying groundwork for institutional adoption and reshaping the competitive landscape of U.S. crypto finance.

🏛PayPal has applied for an industrial bank charter in Utah and for U.S. federal deposit insurance, with plans to establish PayPal Bank. The proposed bank would offer lending services to small businesses and interest-bearing savings accounts to users, while connecting to card networks. PayPal is also an issuer of the PYUSD stablecoin and has expanded crypto transfers and merchant crypto payment services in recent years. The move signals that large payment platforms are using more flexible banking structures to enter core financial services, strengthening the regulatory and funding base for their stablecoin and crypto payments ecosystems and potentially accelerating the convergence of crypto and mainstream finance.

🏛The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has launched its first stablecoin rulemaking under the GENIUS Act, opening a 60-day public comment period. The proposal focuses on the application process for banks issuing dollar-backed stablecoins through subsidiaries, establishing a 120-day review window and an appeals mechanism. This marks the first stablecoin initiative to formally enter the regulatory implementation phase since the law took effect. The move shifts U.S. stablecoin oversight from legislation to execution, clarifying how banks can issue stablecoins compliantly. It also lays the groundwork for forthcoming capital, liquidity, and risk management rules, bringing stablecoins firmly into the U.S. banking regulatory framework.

🏛The U.K. is moving to regulate crypto in line with the U.S., while the European Central Bank is accelerating legislation for the digital euro. The U.K. plans to bring crypto firms under existing financial regulation from 2027, covering exchanges and stablecoin issuance and favoring a principles-based approach rather than the EU’s MiCA-style bespoke regime. Meanwhile, the ECB has completed all technical and preparatory work for the digital euro and is urging EU lawmakers to fast-track legislation, with a launch expected in the second half of 2026. Together, these moves show Europe responding to stablecoin expansion from both regulatory and monetary angles. The U.K. is prioritizing institutional adoption through integration, while the EU is reinforcing a public payment anchor via central bank digital currency.

Capital Deployment

💰Anchorage Digital, the federally chartered crypto bank, has acquired Securitize For Advisors (SFA), integrating the RIA-focused crypto wealth management platform into its own stack. About 99% of SFA’s assets were already custodied with Anchorage, and the deal unifies custody, trading, and advisory front-end services while Securitize refocuses on asset tokenization. Over the past year, SFA saw net new deposits and AUM grow more than 4,500%, far outpacing the broader RIA industry’s 16% growth. As RIAs emerge as a key channel for institutional crypto adoption, the acquisition strengthens Anchorage’s position across custody and compliant wealth management. It also tightens the link between tokenization and portfolio allocation use cases.

💰Moto, a crypto-finance startup, has raised $1.8 million in a pre-seed round led by Eterna Capital and cyberFund, with participation from angels across crypto and traditional finance. The project positions itself as the first truly onchain credit card, built on Solana with settlement, ledger, and risk logic native to the blockchain rather than layered onto traditional card rails. The product remains early-stage, with a waitlist now open, and is partnering with crypto infrastructure providers including Privy, Crossmint, and Rain. The launch reflects a shift in payments from stablecoin debit cards toward onchain credit and programmable liabilities. If successful, it could reshape credit card risk management, settlement, and revenue models.

💰Kontigo, a stablecoin-native neobank, has raised a $20 million seed round after reaching $30 million in annualized revenue, $1 billion in payment volume, and 1 million users within 12 months. The platform offers 10% yield on stablecoin savings, card payments with bitcoin rewards, USDT credit lines, tokenized U.S. stocks, and free international accounts, covering savings, payments, credit, and investing end to end. With a team of just seven people, Kontigo operates a global, cross-border financial system built on blockchain infrastructure rather than local banking licenses. The case highlights the scalability of stablecoins and blockchain as core financial infrastructure. It also shows how new entrants are bypassing traditional licensing models to offer parallel access to dollars and bitcoin in emerging markets.

💰Tether has led an $8 million funding round in Speed, alongside Ego Death Capital, backing a payment processor built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Speed operates Lightning-based settlement rails and processes over $1.5 billion in annualized payment volume, serving more than 1 million users and merchants across consumers, creators, platforms, and enterprises. The scale signals that the Lightning Network is reaching real commercial viability. Tether said the investment aims to strengthen Bitcoin-aligned payment infrastructure while expanding real-world use cases for USDT. The move reflects a strategic shift by stablecoin issuers toward enabling high-frequency payments and settlement, not just value storage.

💰RedotPay, a Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments platform, has raised $107 million in a Series B round led by Goodwater, with participation from Pantera Capital and Circle Ventures, in an oversubscribed all-equity raise. The company reports over $10 billion in annualized payment volume, more than $150 million in annualized revenue, and profitability across 100+ markets and 6 million users. Funds will be used for product development, regulatory licensing, and acquisitions. RedotPay offers stablecoin payment cards, cross-border payout rails, multi-currency wallets, and a native P2P marketplace for both crypto-native and mainstream users. Its growth demonstrates that dollar-denominated stablecoins paired with local spending have strong, scalable demand in emerging markets and are evolving into global payment infrastructure.

💰After Tether’s €1.1 billion all-cash takeover bid for Juventus was rejected, the club’s fan token JUV fell more than 13% from its recent high, while Juventus’s listed shares rose about 14%, showing a clear divergence. The JUV decline largely reflects sentiment reversal and unwinding of expectations, while the stock rally signals traditional markets pricing in the implied 21% takeover premium. Tether already holds an 11.53% stake and sought to acquire Exor’s 65.4% controlling interest with a commitment to invest an additional €1 billion, but the offer was firmly declined. The episode highlights that fan tokens are not equity and have limited linkage to corporate governance or M&A outcomes, with higher volatility. For Tether, the failed bid underscores that financial strength alone does not guarantee institutional acceptance within European football.

New Launches

👀StraitsX plans to launch its Singapore dollar stablecoin XSGD and U.S. dollar stablecoin XUSD on Solana in early 2026, enabling instant onchain SGD–USD swaps and creating a blockchain-based FX layer. XSGD will become Solana’s first SGD stablecoin, filling a gap for a major Asian fiat currency on the network. Leveraging Solana’s high throughput, low fees, and the x402 payment standard, XSGD and XUSD are well suited for AI-driven payments, micropayments, DeFi, and cross-border settlement. The move advances stablecoins from single-currency settlement toward an onchain foreign exchange layer, strengthening Solana’s role as global payments infrastructure.

👀Exodus is partnering with MoonPay to launch a fully reserved, dollar-backed stablecoin, expected to go live in January 2026 and integrated into its self-custodial payment feature, Exodus Pay. MoonPay will handle issuance and management, with stablecoin infrastructure provided by M0, while Exodus focuses on distribution, user experience, and wallet-native use cases. The move expands the group of stablecoin issuers to include wallet companies, alongside Circle, PayPal, and Fiserv. It signals stablecoins moving closer to the front-end application layer. Competition is shifting from issuance toward user access and payment experience, as the wallet-plus-stablecoin model pushes stablecoins into broader everyday spending scenarios.

👀Tempo has launched a new native transaction type, Tempo Transactions, enabling stablecoin payments with features such as batch processing, parallel execution, scheduled transactions, fee abstraction, and biometric login. The transaction logic embeds batching and atomic execution at the protocol level, targeting use cases like payroll, merchant settlement, and subscriptions. Infrastructure providers including Crossmint, Fireblocks, Privy, and Turnkey have already integrated the system, lowering the barrier for enterprises to adopt onchain payments. By bringing bank-grade payment capabilities directly into the blockchain layer, Tempo upgrades stablecoins from simple transfer assets into scalable payment rails. This could accelerate adoption of onchain payment systems by enterprises and financial institutions.

Market Adoption

🌱SBI Holdings, a major Japanese financial group, is partnering with blockchain firm Startale Group to launch a yen-pegged stablecoin in Q2 2026, designed for global settlement and institutional use. Issuance and redemption will be handled by SBI’s trust bank subsidiary, Shinsei Trust & Banking, with circulation facilitated through the licensed exchange SBI VC Trade, reflecting Japan’s bank-custody-plus-licensed-exchange compliance model. Startale, a co-developer of Sony-backed Soneium and issuer of the dollar stablecoin USDSC, plans to pair the yen token with USDSC as a dual-currency stablecoin stack. The initiative signals a shift of yen stablecoins from pilot projects to financial infrastructure, positioning Japan more competitively in tokenized assets and onchain settlement.

🌱JPMorgan has extended its tokenized bank deposit, JPMD, from its private blockchain to Coinbase’s Base layer, marking the first deep move of bank deposits onto a public blockchain under controlled conditions. JPMD represents onchain claims on bank deposits and can bear interest, giving it a different regulatory profile from stablecoins. It is currently used for onchain settlement, margin payments, and collateral, meeting institutional demand for compliant liquidity on public chains. The move represents a defensive onchain strategy by banks, extending deposits onto public blockchains amid stablecoin expansion. Over time, onchain money is likely to evolve into a dual system where stablecoins and tokenized deposits coexist with distinct roles.

🌱Ramp, a fintech platform focused on enterprise finance, has completed a real-world payment flow converting USDC directly into paper checks and then into bank accounts, potentially the first of its kind. Stablecoins are used as the funding source without requiring recipients to change their check-based payment habits. By connecting blockchain funds to one of the most traditional U.S. payment rails, Ramp enables a form of backward compatibility between stablecoins and legacy financial infrastructure. This allows stablecoins to penetrate enterprise payments in sectors that still rely heavily on checks, such as accounting, legal, government, and healthcare. The development shows stablecoins quietly taking over the funding layer behind ACH, wire, and check payments rather than replacing them outright.

🌱Interactive Brokers now allows U.S. retail clients to fund brokerage accounts with stablecoins, responding to intensifying competition in retail trading. The feature will roll out in phases to eligible users, enabling funds to come directly from crypto wallets rather than banks. The firm has previously invested in stablecoin infrastructure provider ZeroHash and is considering issuing its own stablecoin. This move shows traditional brokerages integrating stablecoins into core funding rails to reduce friction and stay competitive with crypto-native platforms. It marks stablecoins’ deeper expansion from payments and settlement into mainstream securities trading systems.

🌱SoFi has launched SoFiUSD, a U.S. dollar stablecoin issued by its nationally chartered SoFi Bank, which is regulated by the OCC and insured by the FDIC. SoFiUSD is fully backed 1:1 by cash reserves held directly at the Federal Reserve, reducing liquidity and credit risk while enabling yield sharing with partners or holders. Deployed on Ethereum, the stablecoin targets banks, fintechs, and enterprises seeking near-instant, 24/7 settlement. Partners can use SoFiUSD directly or issue white-label stablecoins within SoFi’s settlement infrastructure. The launch marks the first time a U.S. national bank has issued a stablecoin on a public blockchain, signaling stablecoins’ transition into regulated financial infrastructure.

🌱JPMorgan Asset Management has launched MONY (My OnChain Net Yield Fund), a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, seeding it with $100 million of its own capital and setting a $1 million minimum for qualified investors. MONY allows subscriptions and redemptions in cash or USDC, with investors holding tokenized fund shares in wallets and earning daily accrued yield from short-term, low-risk debt assets. Following moves by firms such as BlackRock, JPMorgan’s entry signals accelerating Wall Street adoption of tokenization, offering faster settlement, lower operating costs, and onchain collateral utility. Coming after the rollout of the GENIUS Act stablecoin framework, the launch shows mainstream finance integrating yield-bearing assets with onchain settlement. It points to a reshaping of capital flows and the emergence of institutional-grade onchain financial infrastructure.

🌱YouTube now allows U.S.-based creators to receive payouts in PayPal’s dollar-backed stablecoin PYUSD. The option builds on YouTube’s existing partnership with PayPal, which has already enabled stablecoin settlement for some mass payout recipients. PYUSD has a market capitalization of about $3.9 billion, while YouTube has paid creators more than $100 billion over the past four years. The move brings stablecoins into creator payouts on a major mainstream content platform at scale. It strengthens stablecoins’ role as a payment tool and opens new use cases within the global platform economy.

Big Picture

🔮Bank of America says U.S. banks are entering a multi-year transition toward onchain finance. The OCC has granted conditional trust bank charters to several digital asset firms, accelerating crypto’s integration into the banking system. The FDIC and Federal Reserve are expected to roll out stablecoin capital, liquidity, and approval rules under the GENIUS Act. JPMorgan and DBS have already tested tokenized deposits and onchain settlement across public and permissioned blockchains. BofA argues regulation is moving from debate to execution, structurally pushing banks toward onchain assets and payments as part of a long-term infrastructure shift.

🔮The UAE is elevating asset tokenization to a national strategy, embedding it into core economic systems such as real estate, trade finance, and carbon markets rather than treating it as a niche financial experiment. Dubai’s VARA has introduced the Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset (ARVA) category, formally bringing tokenized real-world assets under financial regulation. Multiple government bodies have already deployed live applications, including blockchain-based real estate registration that replaces slow, paper-heavy processes. Tokenization is positioned as digital-era infrastructure, not speculative finance. This build-first, regulate-in-real-time approach is turning the UAE into a global model for a tokenized economy and a potential exporter of regulatory design.

🔮JPMorgan estimates the total stablecoin market will reach only $500–600 billion by 2028, well below trillion-dollar projections. The bank argues demand remains driven mainly by crypto trading, derivatives, and DeFi rather than real-world payments, with about $100 billion added in 2025 largely from USDT and USDC, and roughly $20 billion coming from derivatives exchanges alone. Stablecoins are still used primarily as trading collateral and idle cash, not payment money. JPMorgan also expects tokenized bank deposits, central bank digital currencies, and SWIFT-led onchain initiatives to divert demand. The bank sees a future of coexistence between stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and CBDCs, with stablecoin growth tracking the broader crypto market rather than breaking out independently.

🔮Gold-backed stablecoins have grown to nearly $4 billion in total market capitalization, almost tripling from about $1.3 billion at the start of 2025 as onchain demand for safe-haven assets rises. Tether Gold (XAUt) leads with roughly $2.2 billion in market cap, followed by Paxos Gold (PAXG) at around $1.5 billion, together accounting for nearly 90% of the sector. Gold prices are up about 66% year to date in 2025, driven by macro uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and persistent inflation concerns. The growth shows crypto capital increasingly seeking traditional hedges while remaining onchain. Gold-backed stablecoins are expanding the role of stablecoins beyond fiat pegs into a bridge between macro hedging and onchain finance.