Subscriber note: We’d like to remind non-subscribers that this isn’t just aggregation. There’s unique commentary and insight too! 🙂 It’s come to our attention that our exclusive interviews with major industry players over the past month have flown under the radar.
Industry news:
— R25’s rcUSD+ launched on Polygon, introducing yield-bearing stablecoins backed by real-world assets (via the Block)
Summary: Unlike conventional stablecoins that simply maintain a peg, R25’s rcUSD+ — incubated by Ant Financial — is backed by a professionally managed portfolio of real-world assets (RWAs) such as money market funds and structured notes, offering holders both price stability and yield. Polygon is R25’s first and preferred EVM chain choice. Analysts view the launch as part of a broader trend bridging traditional finance yield gaps with crypto via tokenised real-world assets.
Questions The Peg wants answering: Who exactly is behind R25? What sort of mysterious professional portfolio managers are we talking about? How are they vetted? What if they mess up? How exactly is all this regulated? We have sooo many questions and so far just one very sparse Polygon press release to consult.
— Jack Dorsey’s Cash App is eyeing Solana-based stablecoin payments from 2026 (via Decrypt)
Summary: Jack Dorsey’s Cash App will let users send and receive “digital dollars” using multiple stablecoins, initially routing transactions over Solana from 2026. The move marks a big break from Dorsey’s long-standing Bitcoin-maxi image and pushes stablecoin rails into a mainstream U.S. consumer payments app with tens of millions of users. Cash App will still lean on Bitcoin (including Lightning) for crypto-native payments, but sees stablecoins as the right tool for dollar transfers, remittances, and small payments, where speed and fees matter more than BTC ideology. The article also notes this comes amid parallel pushes by Stripe, Visa, and others to normalize stablecoin settlement.
— Rumble secured a $100 million advertising commitment from Tether.
Summary: The deal is tied to promoting Rumble Wallet, which integrates payments via USDT, XAUT ₮, and BTC. The move signals deeper entanglement between stablecoins and mainstream advertising/creator-economy platforms. It illustrates how stablecoin issuers are moving beyond simply token issuance into broader ecosystem plays — payments, wallets, and creator monetisation.
Key graf: “Tether’s commitment to our Freedom-First video platform proves that Rumble and the creators who have stood unwaveringly for free speech are the foundation for the future of advertising and creator monetization.”
— JPMorgan puts deposit-token rival to stablecoins on Coinbase’s Base network (via CCN)
Summary: Bring on the Tradfi challengers! JPMorgan’s JPM Coin Deposit coin, a dollar deposit token for institutional clients, will now be available on Coinbase’s Base network. This marks the first native payment product from JPM to be offered on a public blockchain. The token represents existing bank deposits and can be used as instant, 24/7 settlement collateral on Coinbase, with plans to expand to other blockchains and currencies, such as a euro token (JPME), which is still pending regulatory approval. Unlike traditional stablecoins, JPMD is a tokenized bank deposit that remains on JPMorgan’s balance sheet and is being pitched by the bank as a yield-bearing, safer alternative for institutions wary of off-balance-sheet stablecoin risk.
The Peg: We can’t wait for the Eurozone to realize that tokenized deposits mean home bias/panic can now be expressed fluidly and efficiently through stablecoin and token deposit spreads on the blockchain.
— Visa piloted stablecoin payouts for creators and gig workers via Visa Direct.
Summary: The pilot will allow platforms to fund payouts in fiat while recipients opt to receive USD-backed stablecoins like USDC directly into their wallets. Launched at Web Summit last week, the pilot targets creators, freelancers, and marketplaces, especially in markets with currency volatility or limited banking access, and is meant to deliver near-instant global payouts while keeping value in a dollar-pegged asset. Visa frames this as an evolution of its earlier stablecoin pre-funding pilot, moving from back-end treasury experiments to end-user stablecoin payouts.
The Peg: We were at Web Summit last week, and even strolled by the Visa booth. But we were absolutely bewildered by what was going on. It was like some sort of “non-experience” experience.
As far as we could tell, the process consisted of standing in a long line without really knowing why. (Truly! We asked. No one had a clue.) Perhaps, we thought, Visa was making a profound and performative statement about the information asymmetry at the heart of every crypto success story? But no. That wasn’t it. Something else — something much weirder — was going on.
Intrigued, we rounded the corner to discover a Cold War-esque checkpoint. There, a bespectacled dead ringer for Mephistopheles in Visa blue was inviting “experiencers” to click on a QR code and input personal data. Yes, really. This, supposedly, was “fun” because, well, who doesn’t love the thrill of being pressured to sign on a dotted line without reading the terms and conditions?
Faustian bargain digitally confirmed, the full depth of the experience then unfolded. First, a walk through a royal blue archway, complete with a couple of office chairs. Then the opportunity to stand next to what looked like a Wheel of Fortune, but without the spinning functionality or, presumably, the fortune.
Then there was some drama around a larger-than-life light socket, where someone may or may not have been attempting to photograph people’s souls:
And finally, there was the production of the physical kompromat to prove you’d undergone the process:
Which should, of course, inspire boundless confidence in how Visa plans to treat its freshly onboarded creators and gig workers.
— Coinbase walked away from a $2 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK (via Cryptonews)
Summary: Coinbase had been in late-stage talks to acquire London-based stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK in a deal valued at around $2 billion, but it’s now abandoned the deal after due diligence. The decision was described as mutual. BVNK would have been one of the largest stablecoin-focused acquisitions to date, so its collapse underscores both how strategic stablecoin infrastructure has become and how sensitive big-ticket M&A remains to regulatory and market uncertainty.
The Peg: What did they find out (or perhaps fail to find)?
— First yen stablecoin JPYC comes to market just in time to rescue the dollar/yen (via Reuters).
Summary: Mrs Watanbe’s chance to get into stablecoins has finally arrived. Japan’s first official stablecoin launched in October, and comes, potentially, just in the nick of time to help Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi get a stimulus package of about 17 trillion yen under way. The logic that underpins USD stablecoins helping out Scott Bessent, applies here too. JPYC’s reserves are held in yen and JGBs, thus increased issuance effectively channels new foreign or domestic demand into yen-liquid assets, thereby indirectly bolstering demand for the yen at a potentially delicate moment when Japan. Without stablecoins Japan might otherwise face pressure to sell U.S. dollars or other reserves to support the currency. It could even help engineer a reverse dollar/yen carry trade if things get really tough.
The Peg: JPYC has said that most of the float (up to 80 percent) will be invested in JGBs to earn the interest margin. Further down the line there’s potential for yield-curve control, since JPYC’s CEO Noritaka Okabe has said that while the company will focus on investing in short-term government bonds for now, it may consider purchasing long-term bonds in the future.
As Coindesk noted: “The Bank of Japan’s openness to the global use of its currency is precisely what gives a yen stablecoin real-world utility beyond Japan’s domestic payments ecosystem.”
‘Stablecoins Accepted here’
— South Korea’s NH NongHyup Bank piloted tourist VAT refunds using stablecoins on Avalanche (via The Block)
Summary: The proof-of-concept pilot was run with Avalanche, Fireblocks, Mastercard, and Worldpay to test stablecoin-based VAT refunds for foreign tourists. The pilot aims to simulate real-time settlement in a stablecoin, without using real customer funds, with the hope of replacing the current paper-heavy refund process. NH NongHyup positions the experiment as part of a broader strategy to modernize South Korea’s financial and tourism infrastructure, and to explore how stablecoins could streamline cross-border payments and refunds while remaining compliant.
**PEG SCOOPLET**: Regulators in Kazakhstan are now accepting stablecoins for payments.
Summary: The Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA) said it received its first regulatory fee payment in USD-pegged stablecoins in October. The payment was made under a pilot project at the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) by licensed digital-asset service provider SkyBridge Digital Finance Ltd., with support from Bybit Limited as a provider. Under the framework, AIFC participants and applicants can now pay certain regulatory fees in stablecoins via approved providers who convert equivalent fiat amounts into AFSA’s designated bank account. The initiative marks a regional first in regulatory payment innovation and signals Kazakhstan’s ambitions to integrate digital-asset infrastructure within its financial centre.
Among those who have already paid regulatory fees in stablecoins is Tether’s sister organization, Bitfinex Securities, which has chosen AIFC as its regulatory hub.
Regulation:
— ECB’s Olaf Sleijpen warned a run on dollar stablecoins could force rate rethink (via the FT)
Summary: Dutch central bank governor and ECB policymaker Olaf Sleijpen warns a sudden run on large USD stablecoins could disrupt markets so severely that the ECB might have to reconsider its interest-rate stance. With dollar stablecoins up about 48 percent this year to over $300 billion in circulation after new U.S. rules under President Trump, Sleijpen says they are on track to become systemically relevant. Because many are backed by US Treasuries and other liquid assets, a loss of confidence could trigger rapid fire-sales, hitting financial stability, the wider economy and euro-area inflation. In that scenario, he says financial-stability tools should be used first but concedes monetary policy might also need to change, without pre-judging whether rates would rise or fall. The article also notes existing ECB concerns that the growing dominance of US-dollar stablecoins could make the euro area resemble an emerging market constrained by foreign-currency finance.
— The BoE unveiled its stablecoin regime proposal, and most of the industry had kittens about the recommended holding limits.
The Peg: We’ve dug into the consultation paper here. But one aspect of the BoE’s proposal that we failed to highlight is that the Bank appears happy to allow stablecoins to use repo markets for liquidity. But only one-directionally. Borrowing securities via repurchase agreements will not be permitted.
— A lobbying war between banks and cryptocurrency companies is threatening to derail the GENIUS Act, POLITICO reported (paywalled).
Summary: The war of words centers on whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to give customers yield on their dollar-linked stablecoin balances. Banks are pressing lawmakers and regulators to shut down these rewards programs, arguing they resemble interest-bearing products that banks alone should be permitted to offer. The debate has been simmering for months as Congress works on broader digital-asset market-structure reforms, but it has now reached the Treasury Department, which is being drawn into the question of how such programs should be classified. Treasury’s emerging view — hotly opposed by crypto advocates — could effectively prohibit the yield-style incentives used by major platforms to attract stablecoin holders. Coinbase is a prominent example: the company provides users who keep USDC on its platform with a return framed as a “reward.” The exchange insists these perks function similarly to credit-card rewards rather than bank-like interest, and therefore shouldn’t be regulated as deposit-taking activity.
— VC firm Paradigm weighed in on the rewards brouhaha in a blog post.
Key graf: “Payment stablecoins are neither banks nor money market mutual funds; they are something new. Allowing affiliates to pay rewards or interest to users strengthens this system, delivering tangible benefits to stablecoin holders rather than inflating corporate profits. At a time when many households are searching for ways to make ends meet (and when traditional financial institutions are cutting back on interest payments) affiliate interest programs create healthy competitive pressure on incumbents to share more value with consumers. Interest payments from affiliates are a pro-consumer innovation, precisely the kind of development policymakers should encourage, not constrain.”
— Europe risks falling behind if it does not embrace global stablecoins (via Euractiv)
Summary: In an op-ed, Tom Duff Gordon, vice president of international policy at Coinbase, warns that Europe may cede competitive advantage in digital finance if its regulation under MiCA inadvertently restricts multi-jurisdictional stablecoin issuance. Allowing them would bolster liquidity, cross-border market access, and euro-area financial innovation, he argues. The risk: stricter rules could push issuance and activity offshore, reducing Europe’s influence.
— A16z pressed U.S. Treasury to keep decentralized stablecoins outside GENIUS Act oversight (via the Block)
Summary: Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm (a16z crypto) is urging the Treasury to clarify that fully decentralized, smart-contract-issued stablecoins are not “issued by a person” and therefore should fall outside the Act’s issuance restrictions. The firm recommends using the control-based decentralization test from the 2025 Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to assess such coins, arguing regulators should update AML/KYC rules and embrace privacy-preserving decentralized digital identity rather than forcing all stablecoins into a bank-like licensing box.
Key graf: “Treasury should make clear that since decentralized stablecoins are not issued by a ‘person’… they are not covered by the prohibition in Section 3(a).”
— A former BoE official warned the BoE’s proposed stablecoin regime could “kill” the sector’s competitiveness (via DLN News)
Summary: In an op-ed, Varun Paul of Fireblocks argued that the Bank’s new consultation on sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins, while thoughtful on risk, could make the U.K. commercially unattractive compared with the U.S. He highlights requirements to back coins mostly with short-term gilts plus non-remunerated BoE cash, and the use of holding caps, as measures that may protect stability but crush business models and innovation.
Deep thoughts:
— Gillian Tett on why Trump’s team is betting on stablecoins (via the FT).
Summary: Former FT bigwig Gillian Tett, now a Cambridge provost, argued the Trump administration sees stablecoins as a tool in the fight against de-dollarization and that policymakers are linking stablecoin growth with strategic monetary influence and financial infrastructure. Private dollar-backed tokens are becoming part of national strategy, not just crypto innovation, she says.
— Paul Kupiec pondered whether the growth of stablecoins will drain bank deposits (via Real Clear Markets)
Summary: Paul Kupiec, an American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy, argued that if banks are allowed to issue their own stablecoins or deposit tokens under the GENIUS Act framework, most customer funds can remain within the regulated banking system rather than migrating to non-bank issuers. In that scenario, stablecoins would function primarily as faster settlement rails rather than as deposit substitutes, and fears of a systemic deposit drain are overstated.
Killer quote: “Unless bank regulators inject roadblocks that prevent banks from competing as stablecoin issuers, stablecoin growth need not create deposit funding problems for banks.”
— “Stablecoins are Starlink for money,” said David Booth on X.
Summary: David Booth, a partner at a16z, framed stablecoins as an always-on, global connectivity layer for value transfer, similar to how Starlink satellites blanket the globe with internet coverage.
— The billionaire predicting that regulated dollar stablecoins will shape everyday finance, not just crypto traders (via MarketWatch)
Summary: MarketWatch profiled Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, a long-time evangelist for stablecoins, noting he is finally seeing his bet pay off thanks to Circle’s 2025 IPO and USDC’s growth to approximately $75 billion in supply. Allaire was a key figure behind the political push to get the bipartisan GENIUS Act over the line this year. He has famously compared the GENIUS Act to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, calling it an “infrastructure moment”. The piece also notes the tension between Circle’s strong earnings (boosted by high rates on reserves) and recent share-price weakness as rates start to fall. The stock is down 7 percent this week, and has a commendable peak-to-trough record of more than 68.3 percent since listing in June.
— Felix Martin at Breaking Views argued the U.S. stablecoin power-play is at risk of backfiring (paywalled).
Summary: The piece argues that the White House’s belief that dollar-backed stablecoins will strengthen U.S. financial power is misguided. Proponents such as David Sacks and Stephen Miran claim that global adoption of stablecoins will boost demand for Treasuries, lower U.S. interest rates, and entrench dollar dominance — essentially creating a “global stablecoin glut” that finances U.S. deficits and expands monetary policy space. But Martin contends that history undermines this vision. Earlier waves of dollarization show that while the U.S. gains modestly, foreign countries bear large costs in lost monetary sovereignty, prompting them to counteract dollar encroachment by improving institutions, stabilizing inflation, and reinforcing their own currencies. Over time, most dollarized economies de-dollarized. The author argues that digital dollarization will provoke similar resistance, limiting the U.S. windfall. Worse, aggressive U.S. attempts to globalize stablecoins could spur countries to seek an alternative international currency. With longstanding frustration over the dollar’s dominance and the IMF’s Special Drawing Right offering a latent framework, the U.S. push might catalyse the emergence of a true supranational currency — something like Keynes’s long-abandoned bancor — ultimately weakening, not strengthening, American monetary power.
Key quote: “The incentives for the rest of the world to resist the loss of monetary sovereignty are very large.”
— Industry expert Simon Taylor believes JPM’s tokenized deposits have just engulfed the stablecoin industry
Summary: Given JPMorgan’s enormous payments footprint, which handles transactions far exceeding the size of the entire stablecoin market, Taylor argues JPM’s launching of its deposit token on Coinbase could be the catalyst for a dramatic expansion of dollar activity on-chain. He describes how a JPMorgan institutional client can now move JPMD onto Base, swap it for USDC, receive the funds directly in a wallet, and then route them to counterparties or back into another bank’s tokenised deposits almost instantly. For him, this marks the beginning of traditional banks allowing “doors” from their closed deposit-token systems into public blockchain environments. Taylor notes that several major banks already issue tokenized deposits, but the real advancement lies in connecting these bank-controlled networks to open blockchain infrastructure without sacrificing custody, compliance, or operational oversight.
Killer quote: “This is how 1000x more dollars go onchain”. Chart from Taylor below:
— Welcome to the stablecoin zoo: Critics asserted that current developments are mostly reinventing the wheel by more complex means.
Summary: A number of voices on X have highlighted our old point (from FT Alphaville days) that all that crypto tokenization and unbundling will do in the long run is recreate the complexity of the free banking age, and with it opportunities to recentralize things around old tradfi norms.
Janus the Watcher argued that the stablecoin market, with 79 issuers and a $255 billion valuation, was like a chaotic “Stablecoin Zoo” where each “dollar” (like USDT or USDC) wasn’t truly fungible, forcing users to pay steep fees — up to $95 to swap $50,000— akin to colonial taxes. This mirrors historical monetary fragmentation, like the 1863 U.S. banking mess with 8,000 currencies or Rome’s 50+ regional coins, which led to trade collapse and bartering. Despite aiming to digitize money, the setup has recreated inefficiency and instability, with issuers acting as warlords extracting seigniorage and imposing fees. He predicts four outcomes: a Tether collapse, regulatory fixes via the GENIUS Act, neutral tech like XRPL making brands irrelevant with low-cost swaps, or banks dominating with tokenized deposits.
Ian Grigg, inventor of the triple entry accounting system, invoked economist Kevin Dowd’s work on free banking to make a similar point.
Statecraft:
— U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent sees stablecoin market growing tenfold to $3 trillion, boosting T-bill demand (via Barron’s)
Summary: Bessent told an annual Treasury market conference that the dollar stablecoin market, currently around $300 billion, could reach $3 trillion by decade-end, driven in part by the new GENIUS Act. Because GENIUS-compliant stablecoins must hold safe liquid assets, Bessent argues this growth will materially increase demand for short-term Treasuries, alongside money-market funds and regulatory changes that favour low-risk assets on bank balance sheets. Treasury is still assessing whether such shifts are structural, but Bessent hints they could influence future issuance strategy, especially for bills versus longer-dated bonds. Stablecoins, in other words, become part of the sovereign-debt demand story, not just a crypto footnote.
Bessent also held up stablecoin demand as a key reason for Treasury’s continued issuance of a higher proportion of T-bills, a debt management strategy from the Biden administration he once critiqued.
Killer quote: “We will likely not need to change coupon auction sizes for at least the next several quarters. Existing financing capacity from current auction sizes and robust demand in the bill market have given us flexibility to manage our upcoming potential borrowing needs.”
— EU institutions clashed over the legality of multi-issuance stablecoins under MiCA (via Central Banking)
Summary: The European Banking Authority has asked the European Commission to clarify whether “multi-issuance” stablecoins are legal under the EU’s MiCA framework. The request follows calls from both the European Central Bank and the European Systemic Risk Board to ban the model outright on financial-stability grounds. The article notes that MiCA currently requires EU-incorporated issuers to hold fully backed reserves in at least one member state, a condition that may not map neatly onto cross-border, multi-issuer stablecoin designs, leaving both supervisors and industry uncertain over how —or whether — these structures can be deployed in the single market.
— VC Nic Carter likened stablecoins to a payments platypus.
Summary: Carter says stablecoins are odd and misunderstood like a platypus, but increasingly crucial in both large-value and peer-to-peer payments flows. He emphasizes how stablecoins are operating in the dark-horses of payment systems: enabling cross-border vendor payments, payroll, and B2B transactions in cost-effective ways.
Central banking:
— Brazil’s central bank shut its CBDC platform, opening space for bank-issued stablecoins (via Valor) 👀👀
Summary: Brazil’s central bank has decided to shut down the DLT-based “Platform Drex” used in the first two phases of its Drex CBDC pilot, citing 👀 high maintenance costs and unresolved privacy issues 👀 in transaction processing. The decision followed a meeting with private-sector consortia and confirms earlier indications that the platform would not be used in the next phase. Experts quoted in the piece say this weakens the CBDC approach and opens the door to privately issued tokenized assets and stablecoins, with banks such as Itaú already exploring their own tokens and Safra having launched a dollar-denominated stablecoin to give clients FX exposure while avoiding IOF and traditional FX fees.
Analysts:
— RedStone predicted yield-bearing stablecoins will close crypto’s “yield gap” (via the Block)
Summary: A new RedStone report outlines how yield-bearing stablecoins, staking products, and tokenized assets are narrowing the yield gap between on-chain assets and traditional fixed-income markets. It predicts a structural shift is coming where stablecoins will evolve from passive settlement tools toward regulated, income-producing instruments that can sit alongside tokenized real-world assets.
— JPMorgan upgraded Circle after it USDC-driven growth slump made it a good buy (via Barrons)
Summary: JPMorgan has upgraded the USDC issuer from underweight to overweight and lifted its price target to $100. Analysts argue Circle’s fundamentals are solid, with USDC volumes and revenues broadly meeting or beating expectations, even as its market share lags Tether’s. The bullish call rests on a view that mainstream stablecoin adoption is still early and that regulatory clarity (via the U.S. GENIUS Act) positions Circle as a key winner. The story underscores that public-market investors are still working out how to value a company whose core business is a dollar stablecoin.
— 51 Insights summed up the state of the industry in a multifaceted report.
CBDCs:
— The IMF mapped six channels through which CBDCs could affect bank funding, runs, and competition with stablecoins
Summary: The IMF identifies six channels by which CBDCs could undermine bank funding and compete with stablecoins: bank funding and lending, fee income, run risk, information flows, and payment-system resilience (with some channels overlapping). Although CBDCs are the focus, the authors explicitly position official digital currency against private digital monies, including stablecoins, as competing forms of money and payment infrastructure. CBDCs that are too attractive could accelerate shifts out of bank deposits and stablecoins, it says, while a poorly designed CBDC could entrench private stablecoins, leaving authorities with less control in a crisis. The note offers a simple scorecard for central banks to stress-test CBDC designs under scenarios that include large-scale migration between deposits, CBDC, and stablecoins.
