A consortium of 21 banks and financial institutions has formed a joint venture to potentially launch a stablecoin in the first half of 2027.

 

The consortium, which was first announced in October 2025 and initially comprised just 10 banks, has grown to include 21 major banks across multiple jurisdictions, including North America, Europe, Africa, East Asia and the Middle East.

 

Some of the financial institutions that make up the consortium include Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Capital One, PNC, Fidelity Investments, WisdomTree, Deutsche Bank, BBVA, MUFG Bank and Standard Bank, among others.

 

With its member institutions now fully established, the consortium plans to launch a yet to be named company in the second half of this year, subject to fulfilling various regulatory requirements.

 

Once established, the company will launch a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar for cross border payments and settlements across wholesale, retail and institutional markets in early 2027. Euro pegged stablecoins will follow, paving the way for the launch of stablecoins denominated in other G7 currencies.

 

The formation of this 21 institution consortium comes at a time when other financial institutions are coming together to support the launch of their own stablecoins.

 

Notable among these consortia is Qivalis, a consortium made up of 37 banks targeting the launch of a euro pegged stablecoin before the end of the year.

 

There is also the Open Standard consortium, made up of 140 companies supporting the launch of Open USD, a recently launched stablecoin that allows its members to share in the earnings generated from its reserves.

 

Goldman has restricted its Hong Kong staff from using Anthropic’s Claude AI model, with the restriction reportedly rooted in geographic considerations.

 

OKX’s restriction on its staff using Claude AI came shortly after the exchange’s Claude account was suspended by Anthropic over noncompliance with its geographic access policies.

 

Although the suspension of the exchange’s Claude account lasted only a short period, an internal staff message said that OKX would not support the use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to Claude for employees visiting Hong Kong or China.

 

As part of its plans to continue allowing its Hong Kong staff to use AI in their daily workflows, OKX said it would direct its Hong Kong employees to other supported AI models. Meanwhile, Star Xu, OKX CEO, has said that the exchange spends between $6 million and $8 million on multiple large language model (LLM) providers and has even built Oli, an internal AI development platform.

 

OKX’s restriction on its Hong Kong staff comes shortly after Goldman Sachs imposed a similar restriction on its Hong Kong staff earlier this year. However, unlike OKX’s restriction, which was driven by an account suspension, Goldman Sachs’ restriction stemmed from a strict interpretation of its contract with Anthropic.

 

After reviewing its contract with Anthropic, Goldman Sachs concluded that the agreement did not permit the use of Anthropic or any of its products, including Claude AI, in Hong Kong, and thus restricted their use.

 

However, this did not mean that Goldman Sachs was restricting the use of Anthropic’s products or Claude AI overall. In fact, Goldman Sachs has partnered with Anthropic engineers to build AI agents for its trade accounting and client vetting.