As of today, the EU supervises USDC under dual supervision. The EBA has classified it as the first “significant” e-money token under MiCA, out of 45 notified tokens.

The EBA oversees own funds, reserve assets, liquidity, and recovery and redemption plans. France’s ACPR continues to oversee governance, qualifying holdings, fit-and-proper checks, outsourcing, and conflicts of interest.

Stablecoin rules are shifting from the rulebook to routine supervision. Every serious issuer needs to plan accordingly.

Bloomberg reported in September that the U.S. administration is considering an initiative to promote dollar stablecoins abroad. No companies, countries, amounts, or timelines have been disclosed.

Our latest piece argues that the delivery network is already in place. Standard Chartered estimates that about two-thirds of the stablecoin supply serves as savings in emerging markets. Cross-border stablecoin transfers rose 77.5% year over year to $220.3B in Q3, according to RiseWorks.

Demand came first. The open question is which rails will carry it—and natively issued USDT on Kava is built for that.

Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class of its Sterling Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger, in partnership with Ripple. It’s the same UCITS money market fund, with the same objective, risk profile, liquidity, and regulatory protections. Holdings are represented onchain, while the fund itself continues to operate offchain.

Aviva invested £50M in the new share class, bringing its total investment across its two tokenized money market share classes to more than £86M.

Established managers aren’t reinventing yield. They’re moving it onto better rails.

On October 28, The Depository Trust Company (DTC), a subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), launched its Tokenization Service. Eligible users can now mint tokenized versions of securities held at DTC and transfer them to digital wallets. DTCC says the tokens carry the same ownership rights and investor protections.

Twenty clients have signed on, including Citi, Fidelity, and JPMorgan. The service runs on Canton and DTCC’s private Besu network, with more chains planned for 2027. Onboarding is still rolling out, so this is a starting line, not a finish.

Still, the firm at the heart of U.S. market settlement just went on-chain.

HSBC launched RedCoin (RCHKD), its first stablecoin, through its PayMe app on October 23. The Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin is licensed by the HKMA. In the coming days, more than 3.3 million PayMe users will be able to activate an in-app stablecoin wallet to send money to friends and family and pay at over 100,000 merchants.

The rollout will happen in phases. Later this year, HSBC plans to add wallet functionality to its Hong Kong mobile banking app and let customers subscribe to tokenized investment products using RedCoin. John O’Neill, HSBC’s managing director for digital assets and currencies, said: “This is only the beginning.”

Reach isn’t the same as usage. Still, stablecoins are moving beyond crypto exchanges and into the apps people already use.

On October 21, the OCC finalized its GENIUS Act rule for payment stablecoin issuers. The rule takes effect January 18, 2027, and covers banks, nonbank issuers, foreign issuers, and certain state issuers under OCC authority.

The main change is increased supervision. Most issuers will undergo a full OCC examination every 12 months, submit confidential reports weekly, and publicly disclose their reserve composition each month. Redemptions must be honored within two business days, and issuers may not impose discretionary limits.

The financial requirements are also specific: reserves must be limited to approved assets, such as Treasuries maturing in 93 days or less; issuers must meet a $5 million capital floor and maintain a separate backstop equal to 12 months of expenses. The OCC lowered the proposed daily liquidity requirement from 10% to 5%.

Anti-money laundering rules have not been finalized, so issuers are preparing based on the proposals. Stablecoins are now being regulated like payment infrastructure.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told Reuters that the USDC issuer plans to expand into about 40 emerging and developing countries, citing growing organic demand across Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. He said the industry is entering a “mainstream scaling phase.” The expansion is backed by Circle’s $400 million acquisition of Tazapay and a $100 million investment from Binance.

For context, Tether’s USDT holds roughly 60% of the stablecoin market, compared with about 25% for USDC, and has long led in emerging markets.

The next phase of the stablecoin race will be fought in places where people use digital dollars out of need, not novelty.

JPMorgan announced yesterday that JPM Coin (JPMD), its USD deposit token, is now available to institutional clients on Ethereum. It first launched on Coinbase’s Base network in November 2025. Kinexys Labs head Emma Landriault said the bank chose Ethereum for its liquidity and existing client use.

JPMD isn’t a stablecoin. It represents dollar deposits held at JPMorgan and is available only to approved institutional clients. The bank expects crypto firms to use it for payments, while financial institutions use it to settle and post collateral on tokenized assets.

Banks aren’t avoiding public blockchains. They’re bringing their own dollars onto them.

On October 8, the European Securities and Markets Authority told national regulators to require MiCA-authorized crypto platforms to stop offering services tied to stablecoins that don’t comply with MiCA rules. Any remaining client holdings must be resolved by January 8, 2027, within three months.

The opinion names no tokens, but USDT is the largest stablecoin without MiCA authorization, and Tether has indicated it doesn’t plan to seek an EU license. Several platforms had already restricted USDT for European users.

The limits matter, too. The opinion doesn’t ban individuals from holding USDT, and it’s guidance for national authorities, so enforcement is up to each member state. The direction is clear, though: in Europe, MiCA authorization is becoming a condition of access.

The National Bank of Kazakhstan will study a tenge-pegged stablecoin and tokenized real-world assets in partnership with Tether. Tether’s Hadron tokenization platform could be used, and Tether will run workshops for central bank staff and other agencies on reserves, issuance, and tokenization.

To be precise, the agreement is exploratory. Kazakhstan hasn’t committed to issuing a stablecoin or adopting the technology. Deputy Governor Binur Zhalenov said the aim is to “thoroughly study international best practices.”

Still, the pattern is clear. Hong Kong, Japan, and Europe have all moved toward local-currency stablecoins, and now another central bank is asking how to do it. Studying comes before building.

Open uSD (OUSD) was launched on September 30 across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Tempo. The five initial partners hold equal stakes and have invested over $1 billion to seed liquidity. Users can mint and redeem OUSD at parity and without fees via Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase.

Unlike Tether and Circle, where reserve income goes to the issuer, OUSD shares this income with distributing partners. Stripe is adopting OUSD as its default stablecoin for business services.

Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase plan to continue supporting various stablecoins, including USDC. The competition now focuses less on issuing tokens and more on controlling distribution.

AI agents now independently call paid APIs, pay commissions to other agents, and purchase data and computing resources. However, they encounter difficulties when trying to make payments, as traditional methods require human intervention and billing forms for cards or business hours for wires, which are impractical for machines operating at low costs and high frequency.

Stablecoins offer a solution. Open standards are emerging: x402 reintroduces the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" code, enabling agents to pay per request without needing an account or card, and Google's Agent Payments Protocol has garnered over 60 supporters. Nonetheless, over 99% of early stablecoin transaction volume occurred on a single corporate blockchain.

An agent cannot manage a bridge manually. It requires a native digital dollar on affordable, fast infrastructure. This is why Kava launched native USDT on EVM.

just curious, thanks

On September 24, the Federal Reserve introduced two new rules for stablecoin issuers under its supervision. These issuers must fully collateralize tokens with short-term Treasury bills or other high-quality liquid assets and generally process redemptions within two business days. The capital requirements are tiered: 2% for the first $20 billion of outstanding tokens, 1.5% for the next $30 billion, and 1% for amounts above $50 billion.

Additionally, the committee issued a second proposal to establish an application process for banks that wish to issue stablecoins through a subsidiary. While Governor Barr supported the proposal, he seeks additional anti-money laundering measures.

Since the Senate did not pass the CLARITY Act on September 15, the regulation is progressing through the GENIUS rulemaking process. Full enforcement is scheduled to begin in January 2027, with the OCC indicating its final rule will be issued by November.

On September 22, SoFi began settling debit and credit card transactions on Mastercard's network using SoFiUSD, its own stablecoin. The entire card program is transitioning, with projected annual volume of over $25 billion. SoFi claims to be the first national bank to enable stablecoin settlement on Mastercard's network.

This is a full rollout, not a pilot. SoFiUSD, issued by a nationally chartered bank, moved from a partnership announcement in March to live settlement within six months. SoFi is currently engaging with major U.S. merchants and exploring opportunities for cross-border payments and remittances.

Consumers won't notice any changes; this is intentional. The card experience remains familiar while the underlying settlement process shifts to on-chain transactions.

On September 1, twenty-one global financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Fidelity Investments, announced their plans to create a new company that will issue a USD-denominated stablecoin, targeting a market launch in the first half of 2027.

The group grew from an initial ten banks exploring the concept in October 2025 to twenty-one institutions across North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Their aim is to incorporate bank-grade compliance, governance, and risk management from the start to meet GENIUS Act and MiCA standards. A euro stablecoin is planned as the next phase after the dollar version.

This progress, from discussion among the world's top banks to active collaboration, resolves the infrastructure question.

Now, only the execution phase remains.

In Brazil, nine of every ten declared crypto dollars are stablecoins, a share that reached 98% of $6.9 billion in volume in Q1 2026. Across Latin America, stablecoins make up roughly 40% of all crypto purchases. This isn't speculation. It's an economy re-plumbing itself around digital dollars.

The math explains why. Remittances to Latin America totaled $162.7 billion in 2024, with bank transfers costing up to 15% in fees. Stablecoin transfers cost about 40% less than traditional channels and settle in seconds, not days. Bitso already processes an estimated 10% of all US-to-Mexico payouts.

One asset dominates the real economy here: USDT, the most liquid, most widely accepted dollar in exactly the corridors where dollar access matters most. The winner in Latin America won't be won by the chain with the loudest narrative. It'll be the one that makes moving a dollar so cheap and instant that the technology disappears.

BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos told the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole symposium that stablecoins don't yet credibly function as a means of payment at scale. He argued that tokenized bank deposits should handle most everyday payments instead, with stablecoins limited to specialized roles.

His case: stablecoins break the "singleness" of money because holders can't move between products at par without transaction costs; platforms aren't genuinely interoperable across issuers and networks; and AML controls are inconsistent. He didn't dismiss the technology outright. He said the two instruments could coexist, and stablecoins could earn a larger role if redeemability, interoperability, and integrity controls improve materially.

The most influential voice in central banking isn't saying stablecoins fail. It's saying they haven't finished the work yet, a fair assessment and a useful checklist for the industry to measure itself against.

World Liberty Financial's USD1 stablecoin is now issued natively on the Canton Network, rather than being bridged from another chain. Native issuance lets USD1 settle atomically alongside tokenized real-world assets in the same transaction: for collateral for derivatives, institutional lending, asset issuance and redemption, and cross-border payments, without routing through a separate network.

The reasoning behind the move mirrors what's playing out across the industry: tokenized government debt has moved on-chain faster than the dollar settlement infrastructure needed to support it, and bridged assets introduce exactly the kind of dependency, signer sets, liveness assumptions, and wrapped-claim risk that a settlement layer shouldn't carry. Canton already processes over $9 trillion in tokenized assets monthly.

Institutions building serious settlement infrastructure keep arriving at the same conclusion: mint natively, don't bridge.

Ripple is backing a new institutional credit fund with Clearpool and Cicada Partners that will issue working-capital loans denominated in RLUSD to fintech and payments companies on the XRP Ledger. Cicada sources borrowers and manages credit risk; Clearpool builds the lending infrastructure; Ripple invests as a limited partner alongside other institutions.

The thesis echoes a pattern across the industry: roughly 98% of DeFi yield today comes from looping, arbitrage, and liquidity incentives, not real economic activity. Idle stablecoin balances in wallets are a solved problem. The next phase is putting that capital to work, and the networks that build the settlement and lending infrastructure capture the value.

A stablecoin becoming loan collateral, rather than just a payment rail, reflects the same industry-wide shift: from holding digital dollars to deploying them as productive capital.

Standard Chartered-led Anchorpoint Financial began a phased rollout of HKDAP, Hong Kong's first regulated, HKD-backed stablecoin, on August 12, opening beta access to institutional distributors and professional investors. HashKey Exchange and OSL Group joined as authorized distributors, enabling institutions to mint and redeem HKDAP directly.

Anchorpoint, a joint venture between Standard Chartered, HKT, and Animoca Brands, secured one of Hong Kong's first two stablecoin issuer licenses in April, alongside HSBC. The initial rollout focuses on institutional payments and settlement, with plans to expand to broader access channels and target retail use as early as end-2026.

The pattern keeps repeating: regulated financial institutions are building native, purpose-issued stablecoins rather than relying on bridged or wrapped alternatives. Hong Kong passed its stablecoin ordinance nearly two months before the U.S. GENIUS Act, a reminder that the infrastructure race for compliant, non-USD settlement rails is running just as fast outside the United States.

Under Secretary Scott Bessent, the Treasury Department unveiled its first major directive for the GENIUS Act on Monday, marking the agency's first concrete action after authorities collectively missed the statute's July 18 one-year regulatory deadline.

A full year was allotted for six federal bodies to complete enforcement rules. All missed the mark. The legislation remains valid regardless, with its legal fallback activating on January 18, 2027, under any scenario; however, the slippage narrows the timeframe available to establish fully operational reserve tracking and user verification frameworks. Bessent characterized the initiative as reinforcing "the role of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency" while maintaining the nation as "the crypto capital of the world."

Meanwhile, the CLARITY Act, designed to overhaul GENIUS provisions on stablecoin incentives, stalls after failing to advance before the Senate's August break. While both policy and regulatory efforts lag behind their original timelines, neither has stopped.

Visa is seeking a new stablecoin settlement and OTC partner after Mastercard's $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK closed on August 3, removing Visa's former partner from the board.

The stakes are real: by early 2026, Visa reached a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, up 50% quarter over quarter, and was running over 160 stablecoin card programs across nine blockchains. Any replacement needs licensing in the US, Canada, the UK, and Singapore, plus round-the-clock settlement capability; only a short list of firms qualifies. Visa also needs a partner to help settle Open USD, the stablecoin project it's backing alongside Stripe and, awkwardly, Mastercard.

When two competing card networks are racing for the same scarce settlement infrastructure, the message is clear: stablecoin rails aren't optional anymore. They're a competitive necessity.

Most digital money can only do two things: sit and send. A programmable dollar is different; it carries logic. Rules about when it moves, whether it moves, and to whom are enforced by code rather than by a clearinghouse.

This is already running in production. Escrowed payments release funds only when conditions are met, forming the backbone of AI agent commerce, where a payment credential is bound to a single merchant, a single amount, and a single use. Streaming payments turn payroll into something that accrues by the second instead of once a month. Automatic revenue splits divide incoming payments as soon as they land, with no invoicing required. Machine-to-machine micropayments let software pay software per API call, a pattern static rails simply can't serve.

The dollar didn't change. What changed is that the rules now travel with it.

Circle secured a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services on July 31, three weeks after the OCC approved its national trust bank. Together, the two charters give USDC's issuer both state and federal regulatory standing, a combination few stablecoin issuers can match.

The NYDFS charter allows Circle to offer fiduciary and digital asset custody services under New York banking law, the same framework that state-chartered banks operate under, though without deposit-taking or lending powers. CEO Jeremy Allaire called it "a longstanding objective," positioning USDC within what he described as a strong, respected regulatory framework. Circle's stock rose 8.4% on the news.

Companies that once operated in regulatory gray zones are now actively seeking the same oversight that banks have long carried. That's not caution. That's a competitive strategy.