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In This Week's Edition:
💬Simon's Market Readout – Ethena puts a 6% dollar yield inside a Visa card. The rate Circle cannot offer sits outside GENIUS and depends on crypto funding markets.
📰Stories You Can’t Miss: Twenty-one banks plan a shared stablecoin, Félix raises $200 million to move beyond remittances, the SEC considers blockchain as the legal share register, Payward races LSEG to tokenize London equities, and Revolut wins conditional approval for a US bank with third-party stablecoins in the product set.
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Simon’s Market Readout 💬
A pixelated Simon gives you his market readout for the week.
Ethena just launched a neobank paying up to 6% on dollars, and the yield is the part Circle can't copy.
Ethena Pay went live yesterday. A self-custodial iOS app on Avalanche where your dollar balance is USDe, Ethena's synthetic dollar.
5% on balances up to $5K on Standard, 6% on Pro (to $15K) and VIP (to $50K). Higher tiers unlock by locking ENA or referring users
Visa card, no FX markup, cashback paid in AVAX. 4% for Standard on the first $2,500 of monthly spend, stepping up to 5% at VIP
Top up in USDe, USDC or USDT across 8 chains
Card issued by Third National (Puerto Rico), program run by Rain. Non-US persons only
Beta is 400 users across roughly 49 countries. Most remaining markets open over the next month, with the US, Europe and Canada waiting on licensing
So this absolutely smells like Avalanche incentives were involved in making this come together, which is par for the course in the world of onchain finance.
The stack is what you'd expect. Rain underneath, Visa on top. I wrote up Rain's daily stablecoin settlement with Visa a fortnight ago, and this is the kind of program that plumbing was built for. The issuer is what makes this interesting.
USDe pays yield because of how it's built. Ethena holds spot BTC and ETH, shorts the perp, and collects the funding leveraged longs pay to stay long. That funding is the 5%.
USDC earns T-bill yield and Circle keeps it, because GENIUS bans issuers paying holders. USDe sits outside GENIUS, so Ethena can pass it through. It's Circle launching a card direct to consumers, except it pays you.
Three things I'd watch.
1. The rate is a blend. Ethena's pricing page describes the headline as the underlying USDe rate plus a discretionary "Daily Boost" that needs one card transaction a month and can be cut at any time. The underlying rate is about 4% today, down from 27% at launch. Cashback funding is not disclosed. My read is that Avalanche is buying distribution.
2. The timing. USDe supply peaked near $15 billion in 2025 and sits around $4.7 billion. The demand was DeFi leverage loops, and October 2025 unwound them. A card is demand that doesn't need loopers.
3. The geography. Other than absolute crypto nerds, who is this for? The launch list answers it. Brazil, Mexico, Kenya and the Philippines are in, with most remaining markets opening over the next month. The US, Europe and Canada sit in a licensing queue rather than a permanent exclusion, which is the part worth thinking about. Ethena can plausibly get the app licensed in those markets. What travels less easily is the rate. BaFin already forced Ethena's German entity to wind down USDe issuance under MiCA, and GENIUS bans exactly the pass-through that makes 5% possible. So the customer today is someone in São Paulo or Nairobi who wants a 5% dollar account, and in those markets this is a killer product. The customer in New York or Frankfurt may end up with the app and not the yield.
The risk is that the yield comes from bulls paying to be bullish. Funding went negative earlier this year. When it does, a reserve fund running at under 2% of supply stands behind the peg, and the 5% becomes 100% subsidy.
Not being a GENIUS stablecoin gives you the yield. It also hands your customer a risk a T-bill never had.
Still, I can imagine every Wall Street and City trader will want one. And it does look like a really nice app.
Stories You Can't Miss 📰
🚀 21 Institutions Back a Stablecoin Company Without Naming Who Runs It
Twenty-one financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Santander, Deutsche Bank, MUFG and Fidelity, have committed to form a stablecoin company in H2 2026 and launch a USD stablecoin in H1 2027, subject to closing conditions. The statement names the participants and the timeline, but not the company, a chief executive, a domicile or a licensing route. That is where the comparison with Qivalis gets awkward.
Key Points:
The plan: USD first, EUR next, other G7 currencies later. The group says the coin will serve businesses, financial institutions and retail users, and intends to comply with the GENIUS Act and MiCA where applicable.
The roster: Eight of the ten banks from the October 2025 exploratory group remain. Barclays and BNP Paribas are absent from the new list, while BNP Paribas joined Qivalis in December. BBVA and Rabobank now sit in both groups. Bloomberg reported in October 2025 that Citi intended to join the euro consortium, but it does not appear on Qivalis's May 2026 member list.
The benchmark: Qivalis, first announced in September 2025, targets an H2 2026 launch subject to DNB authorisation as an electronic money institution. The Qivalis entity, name, CEO and governance were announced in December, Fireblocks was named as its technology provider in April, and membership reached 37 financial institutions in May.
The Tokenized Take:
The strongest case for putting 21 institutions around one table is acceptance. Any single bank can sell FX, custody and tokenized asset services using its own digital money. What it cannot do alone is persuade other correspondent banks to accept that money in place of pre-funded nostro balances. A settlement asset accepted across institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa is a different proposition from JPMD or FIDD. That is where the consortium structure makes a lot of sense.
Shared ownership can create acceptance, but it can also dilute accountability. Nearly a year after the exploratory group was announced, nobody has been named to run this effort. Qivalis named Jan-Oliver Sell as CEO just over two months after its consortium was announced. Its stablecoin is not live either, so adoption remains unproven, but somebody is answerable for getting it from committee to production.
Member behaviour already shows how loose these alliances can be. BBVA and Rabobank are Qivalis members and participants in this new group. Fidelity is backing the venture while already issuing FIDD. JPMorgan is in neither group and continues building Kinexys and its deposit token. Participation preserves optionality. It does not tell us where integration budget, liquidity and client flows will eventually go.
Open USD, which we covered in July, shows what aligned economics can look like before launch. More than 140 businesses have signed up to use it, they will be able to mint and redeem OUSD without fees or volume limits. Open Standard, which launched OUSD, says partners receive the earnings on the reserves after a management fee. Stripe has committed to making OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses on its platform, which makes sense when the partner that brings volume shares in the float. The 21-participant group has said nothing yet about how reserve income will be divided. Until it does, we don’t know why a bank would prioritise this shared asset over another token where it captures more of the economics itself.
For the 21, the test is who takes the CEO job and which participant moves a live payment or treasury flow onto the shared asset first. Do that and the acceptance network starts to become real. Until then, this is a formidable collection of potential distribution with nobody yet accountable for shipping.
💸 Félix Raises $200 Million in a16z-Led Round to Take Stablecoin Rails Beyond Remittances
Félix has turned WhatsApp messages into more than $8 billion of mostly USDC-settled remittances without customers seeing a stablecoin. This week's $200 million financing is a bet that the same conversation can become the front door to loans, savings and a broader financial relationship.
Key Points:
Félix raised $200 million: $87 million in Series C equity led by a16z and a $113 million facility from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. QED, Castle Island and other existing investors joined the equity. Félix says its valuation has increased threefold since its $75 million Series B in 2025, but did not disclose a figure.
The company has processed more than $8 billion for over six million people across 11 Latin American markets, with revenue up more than 2.5x year over year.
Most transfers settle in USDC behind the scenes. Customers initiate through WhatsApp and recipients receive local currency through Félix's payout network.
Senders can fund transfers with US-issued debit or credit cards, or with cash at retail partners including Walmart and CVS.
Félix plans to add credit and savings through third-party providers and build an AI-powered financial companion inside WhatsApp.
The Tokenized Take:
The remittance has become Félix's acquisition channel. Western Union and MoneyGram built businesses around monetising each transfer. Félix uses a payment people already make every month to acquire the customer, then plans to add savings and credit around that relationship. KAST, which we covered in March, is heading to the same destination from the opposite end, starting with a dollar account.
Félix has proved it can turn WhatsApp conversations into billions of dollars of payment volume. Whether those customers will save or borrow through the same thread is the next thing it has to prove.
US tax policy now gives card-funded remittances a 100bp advantage over cash. Since 1 January, IRC §4475 has imposed a 1% excise tax on outbound remittances funded with cash, money orders or cashier's checks. Transfers funded from qualifying financial accounts or by payment card sit outside it, and the IRS's April proposed regulations would extend that treatment to cards issued anywhere.
Félix does not disclose its funding mix, but its core flow was built around debit and credit cards, with cash added later through partners. That means a larger share of its transfers may sit on the tax-exempt side of the line. Western Union is more exposed to cash: 55% of its 2025 transactions were still retail. Cash-funded retail transfers now carry the extra 1% tax. USDPT, Western Union’s stablecoin, can make its backend settlement cheaper, but it cannot remove a tax triggered by how the customer pays.
If the cross-sell works, remittance competition moves beyond the cheapest transfer toward who owns the financial relationship that begins with one. If it does not, Félix remains a very well-funded digital remittance business.
🏛️ The SEC Is Deciding Whether a Public Blockchain Can Be the Official Share Register
The SEC is proposing to write blockchain into its transfer-agent rules for the first time. SEC staff said in May 2025 that a blockchain could serve as a transfer agent's official master securityholder file without an offchain duplicate, but that was a nonbinding staff view. This week's proposal puts it into Commission rule text as part of the first comprehensive rewrite of a transfer-agent framework largely built between 1977 and 1983.
Key Points:
A blockchain can form all or part of the official register, provided the transfer agent keeps "at all times exclusive control" over it.
Question 84 in the release asks how the SEC should handle records that exist solely on a blockchain the transfer agent does not exclusively control.
Routine transfers would have to complete within one business day, down from three, and the standard for posting to the official register would also move to one business day.
Form TA-2 would require agents to report how many issues use issuer-sponsored versus third-party tokenization models, the SEC's first regular count of the market.
Comments are due 60 days after Federal Register publication.
The Tokenized Take:
The whole proposal turns on two words - "exclusive control." A transfer agent is the entity that keeps the legal record of who owns a security. The SEC will let that record live on a blockchain, but only if the transfer agent controls it at all times. Nobody controls Ethereum or Solana, so the SEC is asking in Question 84, whether control over the smart contract and the ownership record is enough, or whether it needs control over the ledger itself.
If control over the record is enough, public chain issuance keeps its path. BNY's July move to put legal title for fund shares directly on public blockchains starts to look like the model, while Securitize and Superstate can continue building on public infrastructure. If the transfer agent needs greater control over the underlying ledger, permissioned infrastructure gains the advantage and public chains risk becoming a representation of a separate legal register.
The new one-day standard favours the native-register model. If the blockchain is the official register, ownership and the register can update together. If the chain mirrors another authoritative database, the transfer agent has to keep the two synchronized inside the SEC's new one-day posting standard.
The 24-hour trading roundtable is focused somewhere else. The September 17 panels are exchanges, brokers, market makers and banks, with no tokenization provider on the agenda, and the SEC itself files 24x7 expansion under Panel Three's "Day 2" initiatives. The weekend gap between a token and the share beneath it, which we flagged last week, stays open.
Anyone issuing or servicing tokenized securities on a public chain has 60 days after Federal Register publication to argue where "exclusive control" should stop. Where that line lands decides whether the register you are building on today is the legal record or a copy of one.
🚀 London’s Top 100 Are Going Onchain. Payward Gets There First
The 100 largest London-listed companies are coming to xStocks, backed 1:1 and available to eligible investors in more than 110 countries. UK investors are excluded.
Payward can build that product without LSEG. What LSEG adds is the part that takes until 2027.
Key Points:
Payward plans to tokenize the 100 largest London-listed companies in the coming weeks. Payward says xStocks have passed $40 billion in cumulative volume, with roughly $20 billion settled onchain, across 200,000+ holders.
RWA.xyz puts xStocks at ~$620 million of distributed value. The FTSE 100 was worth $3.47 trillion at the end of July.
xStocks are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited in Jersey. They provide economic exposure to the underlying shares but carry no voting rights or legal claim over them. UK investors are excluded.
LSE intends to admit xStocks to LSE 24 in 2027, subject to approval. LSEG is separately assessing a rights-preserving tokenized equity structure using its own infrastructure, with no launch date given.
LSEG is building Digital Securities Depository (DSD) for issuance, recording, asset servicing and settlement. Digital Settlement House (DiSH) is designed to provide 24/7 commercial bank money for PvP and DvP settlement.
The Tokenized Take:
Two clocks are running, and only one needs LSEG.
Payward can bring the xStocks wrappers to market in weeks without LSEG. Backed Assets (JE) issues them, giving holders economic exposure but no legal claim on the underlying shares or voting rights.
LSEG’s clock is slower. It intends to admit those wrappers to LSE 24 in 2027, while separately exploring native LSE-issued equity tokens with the same rights and fungibility as traditional shares, potentially using DSD for settlement and asset servicing.
The gap is where the value sits. Payward gets the holders now. LSEG’s infrastructure arrives after trading habits form.
There is also an hours mismatch. LSE 24 runs 17:00 to 07:50 Monday to Friday, which makes London trading close to continuous on weekdays. xStocks keep trading through the weekend. Last week we asked whether a seven-day product can safely depend on a five-day underlying market. A 24/5 regulated venue leaves that open.
The new piece is the cash leg.
Our July DTCC edition ended with the same constraint. Once the security can move in seconds, the cash settling against it has to keep pace.
LSEG now has infrastructure planned for both sides. DSD is being built for the securities record. DiSH is designed to move commercial bank deposits and support DvP settlement.
That is the difference. Other exchange-tokenization partnerships have relied on separate post-trade infrastructure. LSEG is putting its own prospective securities record and commercial-bank-money rail into the same programme.
Three major exchange operators have now picked Payward for distribution.
Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse and now LSEG all point to the same partner.
In Ep. 88, we flagged the risk when one failure affected several apparently competing venues. The names are larger now, but the question is similar. Have tokenized equities reduced fragmentation by creating concentration at the wrapper layer?
If LSEG can put rights-preserving equity on DSD with a usable DiSH cash leg before the wrapper becomes the default way the world holds a London-listed share, London owns the record. If it arrives after, London rented the distribution and Payward kept the customer.
💳 Revolut Gets Conditional Approval for a US Bank Charter
After rejecting Wise in July and bunq in August, the OCC has conditionally approved Revolut to establish a full-service, insured US national bank. The decision letter also spells out how Revolut intends to handle stablecoins, and it is not by issuing them.
Key Points:
Revolut applied in March. Six months later the OCC conditionally approved Revolut Bank US to offer deposits, credit products, payments and digital asset services, with launch targeted for 2027.
FDIC, Federal Reserve and final OCC approvals are still outstanding. Revolut currently serves US customers through partner banks, including Lead Bank.
Per the OCC decision, the bank will offer Revolut-branded stablecoins issued by a third party. It will neither issue the tokens nor manage the reserves.
Retail FX is excluded from the preliminary approval and requires separate OCC non-objection.
Wise sought a narrower national trust charter; the OCC denied it on 21 July over unresolved AML/CFT deficiencies and insufficient fiduciary experience. bunq sought a full bank charter; the OCC denied it on 4 August after bunq failed to substantiate the source and availability of its capital, alongside management's lack of US unsecured credit-card experience and loss assumptions based on European data.
Nubank received conditional approval for its own US national bank in January.
The Tokenized Take:
Revolut is building the regulated distribution layer around tokenized money, and it is happy to let someone else mint the tokens. EURR is issued by Bridge. The US stablecoins will come from a third party too, with reserves managed elsewhere. What Revolut keeps is the customer relationship across deposits, cards, lending, crypto and stablecoins, plus a charter that lets all of it sit inside one regulated entity.
The charter changes what Revolut can hold on its own balance sheet. Its US customers already have FDIC coverage through partner banks, but Revolut cannot take deposits or write loans itself. Clear the FDIC, Fed and final OCC process and the deposit account, the card and the stablecoin wallet belong to the same institution, which is how it built its European base one product at a time.
The OCC's carve-out is the detail worth remembering. Retail FX, the product Revolut built its reputation on, is the one thing held back for separate non-objection, while third-party stablecoin distribution went through in the preliminary approval. Whatever the supervisory reasoning, a bank regulator has now put a retail FX book behind a higher gate than a stablecoin wallet.
For banks, the signal is that stablecoins are arriving inside the banking relationship rather than beside it. The firms folding them in already own the customer interface. Wise and bunq show the charter is not automatic; Nubank in January and Revolut now show it is available to fintechs that arrive with clean files.
If Revolut launches in 2027 as planned, it will be the first European neobank running a full US bank with tokenized money in the product set from day one. European banks watched Revolut add a product a year to customers they had already lost. US regionals should expect the same cadence, and this time the stablecoin ships with the deposit account.
📰 Some More News:
🏦 Tokenization, Stablecoins & Finance
BCP completes first digital bond transaction using GBP stablecoin (Read more here)
Securitize's HINC Becomes Collateral on Solana's Loopscale (Read more here)
Bitfinex Securities lists tokenized notes tied to Strategy, Metaplanet (Read more here)
South Korea's Shinhan signs for Visa stablecoin platform (Read more here)
Circle Adds Native USDC, EURC and CCTP Support to Plasma (Read more here)
VARA, Securitize sign MoU for tokenization innovation in Dubai (Read more here)
Standard Chartered launches spot Bitcoin and Ether trading in UAE (Read more here)
Hashkey joins DTCC working group as first Asian crypto service provider (Read more here)
Nomura's Laser Digital Moves Into DeFi Fixed Income (Read more here)
Securitize Will Issue Socios' Tokenized Sports Team Equity (Read more here)
Wyoming adds Chainlink reserve verification to state-issued stable token (Read more here)
NYSE parent ICE partners with tZERO on infrastructure for tokenized securities (Read more here)
Stellar RWA Assets Outgrow Its DeFi Markets (Read more here)
SoFi, Kraken tie up as crypto and banking push into each other's turf (Read more here)
🤑 Funding and M&A
Kast launches stablecoin-powered business platform after $80M raise (Read more here)
Bullish invests in USD.AI's $100 million stablecoin-based liquidity facility (Read more here)
BitGo acquires Nydig's institutional trading business (Read more here)
Kraken parent Payward delays IPO to second quarter of 2027 at earliest (Read more here)
Firelight Raises $8 Million to Backstop DeFi Vaults With Staked XRP (Read more here)
Trump Jr's firm leads $1 billion Polymarket raise at $21 billion value: Report (Read more here)
💼 Government & Policy
CLARITY Act Fate Hinges on Senate Debate Vote (Read more here)
Singapore central bank proposes legislative framework for stablecoins (Read more here)
Japanese regulator requests tax filing exemption for trust-type stablecoins in 2027 reform (Read more here)
Australia warns unlicensed crypto firms of fines up to 10% of annual turnover (Read more here)
CFTC asks judge to dismiss CME lawsuit over crypto perpetual futures (Read more here)
Thailand puts private wallets and offshore crypto transfers on notice in a major new crypto rule (Read more here)
Crypto industry urges SEC to avoid blanket novel ETF restrictions (Read more here)
Tether Sued Over Alleged Unlawful Freeze of $42.4 Million in USDT (Read more here)
Russia opens central bank digital currency to millions as 12 major banks and top retailers face rollout rules (Read more here)
UK is hunting the $86 billion Russia-linked crypto pipeline as it moves to double sanctions fines (Read more here)
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