Here’s what’s inside this week:

1) Stablecoin monthly trading volume has surpassed US $2 trillion, and the network effects of dollar-pegged coins continue to strengthen—making “sovereignty” a central theme of regulatory debate. Over the past week, non-USD jurisdictions moved quickly: Europe’s Qivalis consortium launched a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin to bridge corporate-payment gaps and improve SEPA cross-border settlement; South Korea demanded a stablecoin bill by January 2025, proposing a bank-controlled model to ensure oversight; Canada advanced legislation for a CAD-backed stablecoin that could integrate into North America’s payment infrastructure; and Israel adopted a two-track plan—tightening supervision of private issuers while accelerating its digital shekel—to secure future monetary sovereignty.

2) Tokenized assets are expanding fast, but deeper structural shifts may prove more transformative. RWA perpetuals, described by Coinbase Ventures as “The Perpification of Everything,” represent a new market logic where price and liquidity precede ownership. Why does this model transcend tokenized equity, and what new market architectures and opportunities might it unlock?

3) Banks face a more fundamental recalibration. The FDIC aims to protect banks’ net interest margin (NIM) through tokenized-deposit regulation, while fully reserved stablecoins compress the credit multiplier and resemble a narrow-bank structure. If stablecoins erode NIM, why are banks still exploring issuance? What distinguishes tokenized deposits from stablecoins in legal status, balance-sheet treatment, and risk segregation? As U.S. policy takes shape, what kind of architecture will define banking in the digital-asset era? See this week’s feature article: “RWA’s Second Curve: From On-Chain Assets to Synthetic Exposure.”

4) Blockchain and digital assets are beginning to reach community fund-raising efforts. Cobo has engaged with the Hong Kong Red Cross and reached an agreement activate a compliant blockchain charity wallet created specifically for the Tai Po fire relief effort in Hong Kong, enabling end to end verifiable donations. Circle has established a charitable foundation with a ‘1 percent equity pledge’ to support CDFIs, promoting microfinance and inclusive financing. This signals that stablecoins and compliant infrastructure are evolving from simple payment tools into components of social financial infrastructure, with digital assets becoming institutionally embedded in public welfare and inclusive finance.

Market Overview & Growth Highlights

Total stablecoin market cap reached $308.174b, with a week-over-week increase of $2.555b. In terms of market structure, USDT continues to maintain its dominant position at 60.20%; USDC ranks second with a market cap of $77.641b, accounting for 25.19%.

Blockchain Network Distribution

Top 3 Networks by Stablecoin Market Cap:

1. Ethereum: $167.3b

2. Tron: $80.105b

3. Solana: $15.616b

Top 3 Networks by Weekly Growth:

1. USDD (USDD):+27.51%

2. Frax (FRAX):+16.04%

3. crvUSD (crvUSD)：+15.91%

Data from DefiLlama

🎯FDIC Will Set the Standard for On-Chain Banking With Forthcoming Tokenized Deposit and Stablecoin Frameworks

This week, Travis Hill, Acting Chair of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), told Congress that the agency will introduce its first supervisory framework—built on the GENIUS Act passed in July—to formally define how banks can issue stablecoins and tokenized deposits. For the first time, U.S. banking regulators are attempting to codify, at the institutional level, how traditional banks operate on blockchain rails.

The GENIUS Act established a multi-layer regulatory architecture for dollar stablecoins: the Federal Reserve oversees macroeconomic stability; the OCC handles licensing; and the FDIC has been granted prudential oversight over “banks that issue stablecoins.” The FDIC is now translating this legal framework into operational policy. The first licensing guidance is expected later this month, with standards on capital, liquidity, and reserve management set to follow in early 2026.

In parallel, the FDIC is drafting a second document that will define what qualifies as a tokenized deposit—a process that goes to the heart of America’s banking future. Will banks issue externally circulating stablecoins backed 1:1 by cash or Treasuries? Or will they digitize existing deposits into on-chain liabilities within the regulated perimeter? After all, if banks can already issue FDIC-insured tokenized deposits, why bother entering the stablecoin market at all?

On the surface, both represent “dollars on the blockchain.” But the financial logic beneath them diverges sharply. Stablecoins are open-loop assets: they can be issued by banks or non-banks, freely circulating on public chains. They require 100% liquid reserves, meaning from a bank’s perspective they sit on the asset side—not the liability side—of the balance sheet. That design limits credit creation and compresses net interest margin (NIM), but it extends the reach of the dollar into global, permissionless finance.

Tokenized deposits, by contrast, are FDIC-insured liabilities. Only licensed banks can issue them, and they retain the legal character of conventional deposits. They stay on the bank’s balance sheet, participate in credit formation, and preserve interest income—while adding near-real-time settlement capacity. Circulation typically remains within the regulated banking network, reflecting a pursuit of efficiency without exiting the supervisory perimeter.

This isn’t just a legal distinction—it changes the geometry of a bank’s entire asset-liability model. For banks, stablecoins are “assetized dollars.” The full-reserve requirement enhances capital safety but shrinks lendable funds. For non-bank issuers such as Circle or PayPal, a stablecoin is effectively a yield product—the interest earned on reserves becomes their new profit engine. Tokenized deposits invert that relationship: they preserve the liability-side economics while modernizing the payment rails. Banks choose this path defensively—to digitize without sacrificing their balance-sheet DNA.

Protecting the net interest margin is the existential floor of banking. Any digital upgrade must answer a single question: Does it erode the spread? Tokenized deposits offer a compromise—preserving the yield logic of liabilities while importing blockchain-level settlement efficiency. It is, in essence, the modernization of the yield engine. Stablecoins, meanwhile, represent an outward-facing strategy—expanding brand, distribution, and global payment reach, though not immediately boosting ROE. The two approaches complement each other: one safeguards the internal income structure, the other projects it externally.

In this light, the FDIC’s forthcoming policy is more than regulatory plumbing—it’s industrial strategy. It legitimizes banks’ participation in blockchain finance while ensuring continuity of their earnings model.

Over a longer horizon, this may mark the starting point of institutionalized DeFi. Tomorrow’s U.S. banking system could evolve into a three-layer architecture:the inner layer—tokenized deposits—powering instant settlement and liquidity management within the regulated core; a middle layer of shared ledgers enabling interoperability among banks; and an outer layer of stablecoins bridging regulated finance with the open, decentralized economy.

🎯RWA’s Second Curve: From On-Chain Assets to Synthetic Exposure

This week, the spotlight fell once again on tokenization—but what’s more interesting is the structural shift happening underneath it.

Europe’s asset-management giant Amundi issued on-chain tokenized shares of its euro money-market fund on Ethereum, marking a symbolic leap in the digitalization of traditional fund infrastructure. The move aims for greater transparency, traceability, and real-time settlement, laying the groundwork for future subscriptions and redemptions settled directly in stablecoins or central-bank digital currencies. At the same time, Kraken acquired Backed Finance to integrate tokenized-equity infrastructure as it prepares for its 2026 IPO, signaling a shift in exchanges’ role—from transaction venues to gateways of asset digitalization.

On the yield side, Plume introduced a suite of institutional-grade RWA vaults on Solana—five in total, spanning Treasuries, credit, and receivables—designed to build a composable “real-yield” layer of financial infrastructure. At the macro level, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and COO Rob Goldstein wrote in The Economist that the transformation brought by tokenization “may prove as consequential as the early internet.” Over the past 20 months, the RWA market has grown nearly 300%, with the BUIDL fund alone surpassing $2 billion TVL.

Tokenization is now a consensus. But what’s fueling the current RWA wave isn’t just the act of putting assets on-chain—it’s the derivative layer forming around them: a new market structure where price comes before asset and liquidity precedes ownership.

In its recently released “Ideas for 2026” outlook, Coinbase Ventures identified RWA Perpetual Contracts as one of the next-generation growth themes, alongside specialized exchanges, next-wave DeFi, and AI-driven financial infrastructure—pointing toward the next evolution of on-chain finance.

According to Coinbase, a new class of synthetic markets is emerging around real-world assets. Participants no longer need to wait for assets to be formally tokenized—they can obtain price exposure instantly through perpetual contracts, whether the underlying reference is private-company equity, a macro index, a commodity, or even economic data itself. The RWA narrative, in other words, is shifting—from tokenizing ownership to synthesizing exposure.

Perpetual futures are one of crypto finance’s most influential inventions: contracts with no expiry that use funding-rate mechanisms to keep prices anchored near spot. Last year alone, centralized exchanges processed over $58 trillion in perps trading volume—three times that of spot markets. Now, that structure is migrating toward real-world references: Tesla’s stock, crude oil, credit spreads, even inflation expectations—any can be traded and settled on-chain as perps. Traders no longer need to “tokenize Tesla,” they just need access to its price feed. What’s tokenized is no longer the asset—it’s the right to access its price signal.

That distinction matters. Speed, because perps require no custody and no legal definition of the underlying; markets can open before the paperwork does. Expressiveness, because most traders don’t seek ownership—they trade direction, volatility, or correlations. From CPI prints to SpaceX valuations, nearly anything can become a programmable financial object.

This trend is already visible on-chain. Injective’s iAssets lets users access the price exposure of Apple, Circle, or Nvidia without holding shares. Hyperliquid, now exceeding 80% of on-chain perps volume, is testing synthetic markets for private-company valuations. Trove is experimenting with collectibles—from Pokémon cards to physical art—as perpetuals. The common thread: markets no longer wait for the underlying security to be tokenized; liquidity and risk migrate first.

This “ownership-optional” structure is also spawning new models of cross-border finance. Newly funded Ostium centers its product design on RWA perpetuals, offering non-U.S. investors compliant access to U.S. market exposure. Traditional cross-border investing depends on layers of brokers, custodians, and clearing systems—slow, costly, and fragile. Ostium bypasses those bottlenecks: by transmitting price instead of ownership, it sidesteps securities-transfer restrictions. Built on Arbitrum, it supports 24/7 on-chain trading and instant settlement, with investor assets self-custodied in smart contracts. Functionally, it rewrites the offshore-broker model—achieving technological and legal circumvention through RWA perps as intermediaries, linking U.S. price signals directly to global liquidity pools.

If tokenized assets solve the ownership problem, synthetic derivatives solve the liquidity problem. The funding-rate, margin, and oracle systems built around real-world prices are coalescing into a new financial substrate: a 24/7, global, crypto-collateralized network that treats price as protocol—integrating trading, clearing, and pricing into one unified stack.This, in essence, is what Coinbase Ventures calls the core of RWA Perpetuals—The Perpification of Everything.

Capital Deployment

💰X Money, the new payments platform for X’s six million monthly active users, is hiring a Head of Payments Engineering to build a high-availability system from scratch, signaling plans to develop its own infrastructure. Solana publicly endorsed the role on X, drawing attention from the crypto community as ecosystem advisor Nikita Bier recently joined X as Head of Product. X has been working with Visa on its digital wallet feature, though the latest hiring move suggests a delay in timeline. If X builds its payments stack in-house and moves closer to the crypto ecosystem, it could lay the financial foundation for its super-app strategy and emerge as a major entry point in the stablecoin and on-chain payments race.

💰Crypto card issuer Rain has fully acquired Fern, integrating Fern’s stablecoin orchestration APIs with Rain’s payments, cross-chain, and card capabilities into a unified platform while maintaining Fern’s existing client services. Fern’s core engine Multiplex will be embedded to optimize routing across multiple chains and liquidity sources, boosting Rain’s global on-/off-ramp and interoperability infrastructure. Fern co-founder Pooja_eth will join as Rain’s Head of Product to drive next-generation on-chain payment and settlement solutions. The acquisition highlights the global consolidation of stablecoin infrastructure and reinforces key foundations for cross-chain routing, liquidity abstraction, and regulated on-chain payments to move closer to mainstream financial rails.

💰Ostium, an on-chain real-world-asset perpetuals platform on Arbitrum, has raised $24 million in funding, including a $20 million round led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto. The platform has processed over $25 billion in trading volume and is now valued around $250 million, with more than 95% of open interest linked to traditional market assets. Ostium plans to expand beyond the U.S., allowing users to trade equity, commodity, and forex perpetuals through self-custodied wallets. By bringing transparency and self-custody to the CFD market, Ostium is positioning DeFi to compete with a $10 trillion brokerage industry and push on-chain finance deeper into traditional trading infrastructure.

💰Former Citadel employees launched Fin, a stablecoin-based payment app that raised $17 million led by Pantera Capital with Sequoia and Samsung Next participating. Fin supports large-value cross-border payments via stablecoins, allowing instant transfers between Fin accounts, bank accounts, or crypto wallets without limits. Corporate pilots begin next month, and the app earns revenue from low fees and wallet interest. Positioned as a simpler alternative to banks under the new Genius Act stablecoin framework, Fin targets the untapped market for high-value digital payments.

💰Axis has raised $5 million in an oversubscribed private round led by Galaxy Ventures to launch an on-chain yield protocol covering the U.S. dollar, Bitcoin, and gold. Now in closed testing with $100 million deployed, the protocol’s delta-neutral arbitrage engine has achieved a Sharpe ratio of 4.9 and remained unaffected by major price swings in BTC, ETH, or gold. Its first product, USDx, will offer stable value and on-chain verifiable yield, followed by BTC- and gold-based versions running on the Plasma chain to reduce costs. Axis aims to bring institutional-grade market-neutral strategies transparently on-chain, creating the infrastructure for verifiable and auditable multi-asset yields and advancing the next phase of compliant on-chain income.

New Launches

👀Former Signature Bank executives have launched N3XT, a blockchain-based “narrow bank” operating under a Wyoming SPDI license. The bank is fully reserve-backed, with each dollar supported 1:1 by cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries and daily disclosures for transparency. Using a private blockchain, N3XT enables 24/7 instant settlement and programmable, smart-contract-driven payments, positioning itself as a compliant programmable-dollar infrastructure for businesses — essentially reviving and expanding the functionality once offered by Signet. Backed by Paradigm, HACK VC, and Winklevoss Capital, N3XT has raised a total of $72 million. Its model embodies a regulated on-chain settlement approach to modern banking, bridging traditional finance with real-time and programmable USD payments as demand for compliant, blockchain-based infrastructure rises.

👀Fintech company Unlimit has launched Stable.com , a decentralized clearing platform for stablecoins that offers gas-free, zero-fee swaps with full self-custody. The platform connects to Unlimit’s global payment network spanning 150+ markets and over 1,000 payment methods, allowing direct conversion from stablecoins to local fiat currencies. Stable.com aims to unify the fragmented stablecoin landscape and serve as a “decentralized clearing house” linking DeFi liquidity with traditional payment rails. By integrating on-chain swaps and fiat off-ramps in one interface, it lays the groundwork for seamless stablecoin-based payments and cross-border transactions, enhancing their global utility and competitiveness.

👀Startale, in partnership with stablecoin infrastructure platform M0, has launched the U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin USDSC as the default payment and rewards token for Sony’s Ethereum Layer-2 network Soneium. Japan’s regulators are advancing stablecoin payment pilots, with major banks approved for yen projects and Sony Bank planning its own issuance next year. Alongside USDSC, Startale has introduced the STAR Points rewards system to incentivize minting and holding of USDSC and in-app activity. By embedding a native stablecoin into Sony’s ecosystem, the initiative shows how tech giants are merging payments and loyalty in Web3 while Japan moves to make stablecoins a core part of its financial infrastructure for future tokenization and on-chain commerce.

👀Circle has launched the Circle Foundation under its “1% equity pledge,” initially funding U.S. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to support small business financing and digitalization. The foundation will partner with global organizations to improve financial infrastructure for humanitarian aid, building on USDC-based relief programs in Ukraine and Venezuela. Circle employees can contribute 40 paid volunteer hours per year, with Fidelity as independent trustee and operational costs covered by Circle. The initiative positions Circle from a stablecoin provider to a financial inclusion infrastructure builder, embedding digital assets into sustainable microfinance and aid networks.

Regulatory Compliance

🏛Ten major European banks including BNP Paribas, ING and UniCredit formed the Qivalis Alliance and applied for a Dutch e-money license to launch a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin in 2026. Led by former Coinbase executive Jan-Oliver Sell, it will enable 24/7 atomic on-chain settlement without correspondent banks. The initiative addresses Europe’s fragmented SEPA system and the small €600 million stablecoin market. Qivalis aims to enhance liquidity and cross-border efficiency for corporate payments while reinforcing Europe’s strategic role in digital finance.

🏛U.S. lawmakers are pressing regulators to finalize rules under the GENIUS Stablecoin Innovation Act, which took effect this summer, requiring implementation by July 2026. The law mandates 1:1 reserves in U.S. dollars or equivalent liquid assets, annual audits, and standards for overseas issuers. The FDIC plans to release a draft implementation framework this month, while the NCUA’s first rule will define the licensing process for stablecoin issuers. As rulemaking advances, Congress is also debating broader crypto legislation and potential conflicts of interest related to presidential crypto holdings. The GENIUS implementation marks the first federal framework for U.S.-dollar stablecoins, with its timeline set to shape global competition and domestic market leadership amid political uncertainty.

🏛South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party has ordered the Financial Services Commission to submit a stablecoin regulatory draft by December 10, warning that if it fails, the National Assembly will introduce its own bill. Discussions include creating a joint stablecoin issuance body led by the Bank of Korea, the FSC, and major banks, with banks holding over 50% ownership. President Lee Jae Myung has made a won-based stablecoin a policy priority to counter the dominance of U.S.-denominated stablecoins, though legislative progress remains slow. South Korea’s bank-led approach aims to protect monetary sovereignty and enhance regulatory control, potentially reshaping Asia’s stablecoin market if implemented.

🏛 Canada is preparing legislation to regulate Canadian-dollar-pegged stablecoins, aligning with the recent U.S. framework that focuses on improving payment efficiency and enabling 24/7 settlement. The Bank of Nova Scotia expects limited domestic impact given the market’s small scale, noting that issuers primarily hold short-term U.S. Treasuries, repos, and money-market funds, and without a central-bank backstop their resilience under stress remains uncertain. S&P has downgraded Tether’s peg-maintenance assessment, while Circle’s larger share of U.S. Treasuries is seen as more stable. As reserves grow into the trillions, they could affect Treasury liquidity and the dollar’s global reach. The move shows Canada’s effort to formalize digital-currency policy and positions stablecoins as a strategic component of North America’s payment infrastructure.

🏛Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron said monthly stablecoin transactions now exceed $2 trillion and are highly concentrated, with Tether and Circle accounting for 99% of the market, making them no longer a peripheral phenomenon. Regulators are building an expandable framework focused on 1:1 reserves and high-liquidity assets to tighten oversight of private issuers and reduce systemic risk. Meanwhile, the Digital Shekel team has outlined a 2026 roadmap to deliver formal policy recommendations this year and position Israel’s CBDC as “general-purpose central bank money.” By treating stablecoins as a systemic issue, Israel is joining a global trend of pursuing a dual-track path: tight regulation for private stablecoins and active CBDC development to safeguard future monetary sovereignty.

🏛Ripple has received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to expand its services under its existing Major Payment Institution license, allowing broader token-based settlement and payment offerings for banks, fintechs, and crypto firms. The authorization covers assets such as XRP and RLUSD, enabling institutions to handle FX, settlement, and cross-border payments through a single integration without building their own infrastructure or holding tokens directly. Asia-Pacific remains Ripple’s fastest-growing region, with on-chain activity up 70% year-on-year, and Singapore has served as its regional hub since 2017 under a clear regulatory framework. The approval highlights the institutionalization of compliant token-based settlement and its growing role in the region’s financial infrastructure.

🏛The UK’s Digital Assets Property Act 2025 has received Royal Assent, formally recognizing crypto assets as a distinct “third category” of property, separate from chattels and choses in action. Industry body CryptoUK says the change clarifies ownership, theft recovery, bankruptcy, and inheritance procedures involving digital assets. The Bank of England is simultaneously consulting on stablecoin regulation to align with U.S. progress. By legislating clear property rights for crypto, the UK establishes a unified legal-regulatory foundation that could accelerate compliant use of stablecoins and tokenized assets, while strengthening its position in the global crypto-law race.

🏛Citadel has sent a letter to the U.S. SEC questioning the current direction of the agency’s DeFi framework, arguing that some protocols facilitating tokenized U.S. stock trades via smart contracts effectively operate as exchanges or brokers and should be evaluated under equivalent regulatory standards. The letter warns that any regulatory exemptions for DeFi must be set through formal rulemaking to avoid unequal oversight and weakened investor protection. In response, figures such as Uniswap founder Hayden Adams criticized Citadel for equating open-source developers with financial intermediaries, calling the stance a continuation of the firm’s historically hostile view of DeFi and a misunderstanding of its permissionless nature. The debate underscores traditional finance’s growing influence over U.S. DeFi policy — and the possibility that treating smart contracts as “exchange-like” entities could reshape the regulatory boundaries for tokenized assets and on-chain markets.

Market Adoption

🌱 Visa has partnered with digital asset platform Aquanow to expand stablecoin settlement—such as USDC—across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, enabling always-on clearing and settlement. Visa’s stablecoin settlement volume has reached an annualized $2.5 billion, with plans to scale to “four stablecoins across four blockchains.” Aquanow holds a license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority and already operates across the Gulf region. The partnership shows global payment networks integrating stablecoins into core infrastructure, accelerating the shift toward on-chain settlement and modernizing cross-border payment systems.

🌱Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, has issued on-chain shares of its euro money market fund on Ethereum, in partnership with CACEIS for token transfer, custody wallets, and 24/7 subscription and redemption. The tokenization aims to increase transparency, traceability, and near-real-time settlement, while laying groundwork for future flows using stablecoins or CBDCs. With the RWA tokenization market projected to reach $37.1 billion by 2025, institutions are moving from pilots to scalable infrastructure. By bringing a core fund product on-chain, Amundi signals that blockchain is becoming part of mainstream financial plumbing and could reshape fund distribution and liquidity management.

🌱Uniswap Labs has partnered with European fintech app Revolut to let users in 28 countries buy crypto directly on-chain using Revolut balances or cards. The integration supports over 40 tokens and multiple fiat currencies including USD, EUR, and GBP, with zero Revolut fees and only network costs. For now, purchases cover assets like ETH, USDC, and POL, while off-ramp support is still pending. By linking fiat rails directly to DeFi, the move streamlines access to on-chain assets and expands Uniswap’s user base and liquidity within the broader crypto ecosystem.