Mastercard is expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to support intraday, weekend, and holiday settlements using both fiat currencies and on-chain card settlements.

 

 

According to Mastercard, the expansion is aimed at providing users across the company's global payments network with greater flexibility, allowing them to better manage liquidity and gain greater control over how their money moves. The expansion is also expected to facilitate transactions that depend on timing and transparency, including cross-border payments, treasury operations, and payouts.

 

"The next phase of stablecoin adoption is about real-world utility, especially in settlement, where timing and liquidity matter most," said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of Blockchain & Digital Assets at Mastercard.

 

"By introducing intraday and weekend settlement options across our global network, we're expanding how partners manage liquidity and operate in an always-on digital economy while maintaining the trust, resilience, and safeguards they expect from Mastercard."

 

With this expansion, Mastercard will support additional stablecoins, including Paxos's PYUSD, USDG, and USDP; Ripple's RLUSD; and SoFi's SoFiUSD, in addition to Circle's USDC, which it already supports. These stablecoins will be supported across multiple blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo, and XRPL.

 

ARQ (formerly known as DolarApp), CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank, and Nuvei will be among the first companies in the United States and Latin America to support Mastercard's stablecoin settlement options, with further expansion expected throughout the year.

 

Mastercard's addition of more settlement options comes shortly after the payments giant acquired BVNK, a leading stablecoin infrastructure company, in March. The acquisition is part of Mastercard's broader strategy to connect on-chain payment rails with traditional fiat rails.

 

Mastercard is currently one of the world's largest payment processing networks, with more than 150 million merchant locations across 210 countries and territories. The company processed approximately $10.6 trillion in gross dollar volume (GDV) and reported net revenue of about $8.4 billion in the first quarter of this year.

 

 

Decentralized finance protocol Ethena Labs has partnered with Anchorage Digital, a digital asset infrastructure provider, to expand its presence in institutional lending through Anchorage Digital's Atlas Collateral Management platform, which manages institutional-grade digital asset collateral.

 

 

As Ethena Labs seeks to deepen its involvement in institutional lending, the partnership will see Anchorage Digital act as collateral manager for Ethena's institutional lending activities. This arrangement allows Ethena to focus on deploying capital for loans, while Anchorage Digital manages and safeguards the associated collateral under its custody.

 

"Institutions want access to crypto native capital, but not at the cost of custody, controls, or operational rigor. Atlas Collateral Management lets protocols like Ethena Labs meet institutional borrowers where they are, combining the speed of DeFi with the standards institutions require," said Nathan McCauley, Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital.

 

Through the Atlas Collateral Management platform, Anchorage can monitor collateral and loan thresholds in real time, support margin processes, and execute rules-based actions when necessary. Because the collateral remains under Anchorage's custody and does not move on the chain, Ethena can access traditional institutional lending markets without requiring institutions to adopt blockchain native custody solutions or interact directly with DeFi smart contracts.

 

For borrowers, the collaboration provides access to crypto native credit while allowing them to maintain their existing custodial, compliance, and risk management frameworks. Atlas offers protocols a streamlined way to expand into institutional lending without building and maintaining their own collateral management, monitoring, and liquidation infrastructure.

 

The partnership between Ethena Labs and Anchorage Digital builds on an existing relationship. In July 2025, Ethena partnered with Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, to become the primary issuer of USDtb, Ethena Labs' institutional-grade stablecoin.

 

As part of its broader push into institutional lending, Ethena recently partnered with Solana-based DeFi platform Jupiter and Bitwise Asset Management to launch an institutional-grade USDe lending market on Jupiter's lending platform.

 

The partnership between Anchorage Digital and Ethena Labs comes at roughly the same time as Coinbase's investment in Ethena Labs, which included the purchase of an undisclosed amount of ENA tokens. Coinbase and Ethena are working together to launch on-chain savings and finance products for Coinbase's more than 100 million users.

 

 

MoneyGram has launched MGUSD, a U.S. dollar pegged stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain network, aimed at facilitating cross border transfers and remittances.

 

According to MoneyGram, the MGUSD stablecoin is designed to serve non crypto native users, particularly people who regularly move money across borders and those with little or no access to local financial services, including individuals living in high inflation markets.

 

 

By launching MGUSD, MoneyGram aims to provide these users with greater financial stability, enabling them to hold and access their dollar denominated MGUSD assets around the clock and convert MGUSD into local currencies whenever they choose, from anywhere in the world and on their own terms.

 

"The stablecoin market has largely focused on the asset itself. MoneyGram is taking a fundamentally different approach. Starting with our distribution platform, we're using stablecoin as a foundation to build future applications on our global network," said Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MoneyGram.

 

"MGUSD is the stablecoin we built for our customers, for the families sending money home and for the billions of people around the world with limited financial access."

 

The launch of MGUSD was made possible through partnerships with several companies involved in the project. These include Stellar, which provides the blockchain on which MGUSD is issued; Bridge, a Stripe owned company that serves as the regulated issuer of the stablecoin; M0, which provides the smart contract infrastructure for minting and burning the stablecoin; and Fireblocks, which provides custodial services.

 

MGUSD will be integrated directly into the MoneyGram app through a self custodial wallet that will allow users to view their dollar denominated balances. Although MGUSD has launched in the U.S. market, MoneyGram said it plans to expand the stablecoin's availability globally.

 

About MoneyGram 

MoneyGram is a global financial services company that provides fast, accessible cross border money transfers, particularly for people with limited access to traditional banking services. Its core mission is to make sending money across borders simple, reliable, and accessible to millions of migrant workers and their families.

 

In line with this mission, MoneyGram operates one of the world's largest networks, with nearly 500,000 agent locations worldwide and more than 5 billion endpoints. The company serves more than 60 million active users across 200 countries and territories.

 

 

Block's Cash App has officially begun rolling out USDC stablecoin payments to its nearly 60 million monthly users. The feature went live today for roughly 25% of the platform's user base, with full availability expected by the end of the week.

 

The rollout covers four blockchain networks: Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. Users can now send USDC from their Cash App wallet to external wallets on any of the supported chains, and incoming USDC is automatically converted into a dollar balance within the app. No separate transfer fee applies, at least for now.

 

A Reluctant Pivot, Years in the Making

The launch carries some ideological weight. Jack Dorsey, Block's CEO and longtime Bitcoin maximalist, spent years positioning Cash App as a Bitcoin-first platform. He built out Bitcoin trading, backed mining hardware development, and integrated Lightning Network support for Square merchants globally. Stablecoins were not part of that vision.

 

That changed, grudgingly. In March, Dorsey publicly acknowledged the shift. "I don't like that we're going to support stablecoins but our customers want to use them," he said. "I don't think it's wise to go from one gatekeeper to another." The comment was candid in a way that's rare for major fintech announcements, and it framed the product addition less as strategic enthusiasm and more as a concession to market demand.

 

Block first hinted at the feature on the Cash App website late last year, describing stablecoins strictly as a payments mechanism rather than an investment tool. But that early hint has carried through to the live product.

 

Why Solana (and Why Not Just Solana)

Solana started as the sole chain involved with Cash App. Back in November 2025, Solana confirmed its involvement after sharing a demo by Circle's Jeremy Allaire showcasing a USDC transfer on the network. The choice made sense: Solana transactions typically cost under a cent and settle in under a second, conditions well-suited for the kind of peer-to-peer and remittance use cases Cash App serves.

 

But Block's Miles Suter framed the company's stance as "chain- and coin-agnostic" from the beginning. Solana was a starting point, not a commitment. The live rollout now includes Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum alongside Solana, giving users flexibility across networks with different cost and speed profiles. Ethereum's gas fees can still spike during congestion, which is precisely why Layer 2 options like Arbitrum and Polygon matter.

 

The multi-chain approach also future-proofs the integration somewhat. If one network faces congestion or reliability issues at scale, users and the platform aren't locked in.

 

The Guardrails Are Real

Cash App is not positioning this as a DeFi on-ramp. The feature comes with meaningful restrictions. Sending is capped at $2,000 per day and $5,000 per week; receiving tops out at $10,000 weekly. The service is currently unavailable in New York and on sponsored accounts. Identity verification is required.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the app warns users that blockchain transactions are irreversible. Funds sent to a wrong address or unsupported network are gone permanently. That's a steep hill to climb for a consumer platform serving tens of millions of people who may be encountering on-chain transfers for the first time.

 

Stablecoins Are Here To Stay...and Thrive

Cash App's move lands against a backdrop of surging stablecoin adoption. As of this week, the total market value of stablecoins has hit a record $322 billion, exceeding the foreign exchange reserves of 95 nations, including the UK and Canada. USDC, issued by Circle, is the second-largest stablecoin and already sees over $14 billion in liquidity on Solana alone.

 

Western Union launched Solana-based remittances in the first half of 2026. Stripe has added USDC support across multiple chains. Visa has integrated Solana for stablecoin settlements. The regulatory picture has also clarified somewhat, with the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025 establishing a clearer federal framework for stablecoin issuance.

 

Taken together, this feels less like a novelty launch and more like a platform making its peace with where consumer payments are heading. Dorsey may not love it, but the product is live, the networks are there, and 60 million people now have a relatively frictionless path to on-chain dollar transfers whether they know what a blockchain is or not.

 

EURR and USDR, stablecoins issued by StablR, have each lost their euro and dollar pegs following an exploit on StablR’s multisignature wallets.

 

The exploit, first flagged by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, led to losses of about $10 million. According to ZachXBT, two contracts tied to StablR were exploited, with the attacker funding their wallet through Circle’s Cross Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) on Noble.

 

In a further update on his Telegram channel, ZachXBT said he had helped freeze six figures worth of the stolen funds, while adding that the StablR team appeared to be inactive as the attack was still ongoing three hours after he raised the alarm.

 

Blockchain security company Blockaid also detected the exploit, attributing the compromise to a private key issue in StablR multisignature wallets. According to Blockaid, the attacker gained access to one of StablR’s three multisignature wallets.

 

Since the multisignature wallet had a threshold of 1 out of 3, the attacker, after gaining admin access, replaced the other two legitimate owners. The attacker then minted 8.35 million USDR and 4.5 million EURR stablecoins and swapped them on decentralized exchanges. Blockaid further stated that the attack was not a smart contract bug, but instead a key management and governance failure.

 

A few hours after the incident was flagged, the StablR team issued a security update stating that they were actively working to contain and minimize the impact of the hack.

 

 

At the time of writing, EURR, StablR’s euro-pegged stablecoin, had lost about 53 percent of its value, dropping to about $0.54 according to CoinGecko. USDR, the stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, had risen slightly to $0.99.

 

This is not the first time a protocol has lost its stablecoin peg due to a governance exploit. In March of this year, Resolv Lab suffered a governance exploit that enabled attackers to gain admin access and mint roughly $80 million worth of Resolv’s USR, a dollar-pegged stablecoin.

 

Due to this uncontrolled minting, the USR stablecoin lost its peg to the US dollar, crashing to roughly $0.05 within minutes. USR is currently trading at $0.16 according to CoinGecko.

 

 

Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, has partnered with the Georgian government to launch GELT, a stablecoin representing the lari, the country’s official currency.

 

 

The partnership, announced on Monday, aims to create a financial ecosystem that supports cross-border commerce, fintech development, and broader access to programmable financial infrastructure across Georgia.

 

GELT will serve as a digital representation of the Georgian lari and will be designed to enable lower transaction costs, near instant settlement, programmable payments, and more efficient movement of value across digital financial systems.

 

“Together with visionary partners like Tether, Georgia is laying the foundations for a more connected, transparent, and digitally empowered financial world,” said Irakli Kobakhidze, Prime Minister of Georgia.

 

The launch of the GELT stablecoin is built on a regulatory framework created by the Georgian government and the National Bank of Georgia. In March this year, the National Bank of Georgia developed a framework governing the issuance of stablecoins.

 

The framework, officially known as “The Rule for the Initial Coin Offering of a Stable Virtual Asset by a Virtual Asset Service Provider,” sets out standards that must be met by all virtual asset service providers (VASPs) operating in the country, including requirements for 100 percent reserve backing, strong consumer protections, proper risk management, and full compliance with the country’s Anti Money Laundering (AML) standards.

 

“Stablecoins are no longer a niche financial instrument. They are becoming part of the infrastructure layer for global finance,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “Georgia has moved early to create serious regulatory architecture for digital assets and stablecoins, and that clarity creates the foundation for real innovation and adoption.”

 

Georgia’s stablecoin framework is also designed to be compatible with other regulatory frameworks, including the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) and Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA).

 

By partnering with Tether to launch the GELT stablecoin, Georgia becomes the first country to team up with a major stablecoin issuer to issue a government-supported stablecoin pegged to its national currency. The UAE has also launched a dirham-pegged stablecoin, but unlike Georgia’s GELT, that stablecoin was issued by local consortia rather than a major stablecoin issuer such as Tether.

 

The planned launch of the GELT stablecoin comes shortly after Tether launched its self-custodial wallet. In an effort to increase access to stablecoins, Qivalis recently expanded its consortium to include more banks, which are collectively working to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin.

 

Qivalis, an Amsterdam-based joint venture developing a fully regulated MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, has expanded its consortium to include 25 new banks.

 

 

With this expansion, the Qivalis consortium now comprises 37 banks across 15 European countries, including major names such as ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Nordea, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banco Sabadell, and Bankinter.

 

Created in early December last year, the Qivalis consortium is a group of European banks that came together to develop a stablecoin pegged to the euro. By launching a euro-pegged stablecoin, Qivalis aimed to create a credible and regulated alternative to the widely used United States dollar stablecoin.

 

The Qivalis euro-backed stablecoin would also eliminate the need for European banks to launch competing bank-issued stablecoins, as it is interoperable and fully compliant with MiCA across the European Union and the European Economic Area.

 

The consortium is currently pursuing an Electronic Money Institution license from De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, with plans to launch a euro-backed stablecoin in the second half of this year.

 

The State of the Stablecoin Market

The stablecoin market continues to grow significantly, with more traditional finance institutions entering and tapping into the expanding sector. According to a recent report, total stablecoin liquidity, or market capitalization, has crossed $320 billion, with US dollar-backed stablecoins accounting for about 95% of the market.

 

Tether (USDT) remains the most widely used US dollar-backed stablecoin, accounting for about 57.96% of the market, or approximately $ 185 billion in market capitalization. USD Coin (USDC) follows, accounting for about 24% of the market and having a market capitalization of roughly $78-79 billion.

 

The euro-denominated stablecoin market still represents a small fraction of the global stablecoin market. According to CoinGecko, euro-denominated stablecoins have a combined market capitalization of roughly $670 million, with EURC from Circle and EURS from Stasis being the two most prominent, with market caps of $436 million and $145 million, respectively.

 

 

Flipcash, a digital payment app founded by Ted Livingston, the founder of messaging app Kik, has partnered with Coinbase to launch USDF, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.

 

 

According to Coinbase, the launch aims to make stablecoin issuance more accessible. Through the partnership, Flipcash can leverage Coinbase’s custom stablecoin platform to create its own stablecoin asset without having to handle much of the underlying technical complexity itself. As a result, Flipcash does not need to build an entire stablecoin infrastructure from scratch.

 

The USDF stablecoin will be issued on the Solana blockchain and will be 1:1 backed by USDC. It will also serve as Flipcash’s native currency. Since Flipcash allows users to create their own digital currencies, USDF will be the asset in which those currencies are priced and settled. It will serve as the settlement asset for trading digital currencies within the Flipcash app.

 

Coinbase’s Custom Stablecoin Platform 

Coinbase custom stablecoin, or stablecoin as a service, is a platform launched by Coinbase in 2025 that allows businesses to easily create and issue their own branded stablecoins backed by the United States dollar.

 

As the stablecoin market continues to grow and gain institutional adoption, Coinbase launched its stablecoin platform to make it easier for businesses to enter the stablecoin market, reducing the technical and compliance work associated with issuing stablecoins.

 

Stablecoins launched on Coinbase’s custom stablecoin platform, including USDF, which is the first stablecoin created on the platform, will maintain a 1-to-1 backing with USDC and will be supported across multiple chains, including Base and Solana.

 

About Flipcash 

Flipcash is a Solana-based non-custodial mobile wallet and digital payment app created by Canadian entrepreneur Ted Livingston in 2021.

 

It was created to digitize cash and make peer-to-peer payments as frictionless as possible. Through its “Currency Creator” feature, which officially went live last month, Flipcash allows anyone to create a fixed supply of digital currencies.

 

 

Stablecoin infrastructure startup Checker has just raised over $8 million across pre-seed and seed funding rounds to accelerate development of its stablecoin network.

 

The funding round was led by Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, and Framework Ventures, with participation from Onigiri, IGNIA, Cerulean, Aquanow, Commerce Ventures, Pharsalus Capital, SNZ Capital, DFS Lab, Breed, Overlook, Velocity, Bitso Business, and AirTM.

 

Other angel investors involved in the round include Stripe, Tala, Flutterwave, Mesh, ComplyAdvantage, and Superstate, among others.

 

 

With this new funding, the Checker team aims to accelerate its global expansion plans while building a credit infrastructure embedded within its platform that allows users to lend and borrow without always having to pre-fund their accounts. The team also plans to automate its operations by building AI agents to handle treasury management, back office operations, and predictive analytics, all aimed at helping the platform scale efficiently.

 

Another goal for the Checker team is to solve the fragmentation problem currently facing stablecoin infrastructure. Despite the growing adoption of stablecoins and tokenized assets, liquidity fragmentation, operational complexity, and compliance hurdles continue to hamper large-scale adoption, particularly among institutions.

 

While institutions have adopted several makeshift solutions to work around these hurdles, such solutions are often difficult to maintain and scale. This is the problem Checker aims to solve.

 

Through its single API, institutions can launch and scale products across trading, payments, treasury, and credit markets. Institutions do not need to worry about integrating multiple providers into their platforms, as Checker abstracts these complex integration processes into a single API connection.

 

About Checker 

Checker is a stablecoin infrastructure startup that allows financial institutions access to stablecoin and fiat liquidity through its single API platform. Its platform currently supports over 75 currencies, supporting over 50 liquidity providers, including exchanges, OTC desks, and banks. 

 

Since its launch, Checker has processed several billion dollars, processing over 43 billion within its first 12 months of operation. It also serves several financial institutions across the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, notable among them are Rail, which was acquired by Ripple, and Brasa Bank in Brazil.

 

 

Zerohash, a leading crypto infrastructure provider, has received an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank.

 

The EMI license comes shortly after it secured a Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCAR) license in October 2025 from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM).

 

With the EMI license secured, Zerohash is now the first MiCAR-licensed firm to obtain an Electronic Money Institution license in accordance with the European Banking Authority’s June 2025 No Action Letter and February 2026 clarifications, which gave crypto firms and stablecoin issuers a temporary breathing space to get their payment licenses in order by March 2nd of this year.

 

 

By securing the EMI license, Zerohash positions itself to issue, manage, and support stablecoin-powered payments using e-money tokens across the European Economic Area. Zerohash now has the regulatory basis to integrate crypto and traditional electronic money flows for its institutional clients.

 

"Europe has a massive market for stablecoin applications," said Roeland Goldberg, Managing Director, Europe at Zerohash. "The announcement comes on the heels of accelerating momentum for Zerohash across Europe. In recent months, the company has expanded its European Union presence in Amsterdam and is now powering partners, including Interactive Brokers Europe, in the region."

 

Alongside the previously secured MiCAR license, Zerohash can now serve its institutional clients, including banks, fintechs, brokerages, payment providers, and large enterprises, providing compliant stablecoin settlement, remittances, and digital asset services across Europe.

 

About Zerohash 

Zerohash is a leading infrastructure provider for crypto, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. Through its application programming interface (API) and embeddable developer kit, it enables large institutions, including banks, brokerages, and fintech companies, to integrate crypto trading, stablecoin payments, custody, tokenization, and fiat to crypto and crypto to fiat conversion services into their own platforms, without having to build complex backend infrastructure or navigate regulatory frameworks themselves.

 

Zerohash is currently a licensed money transmitter in 51 United States jurisdictions and serves more than 5 million users across over 190 countries. Its crypto and stablecoin infrastructure has also been used by several institutional firms, including Interactive Brokers, Stripe, Franklin Templeton, and MoneyLion, with its infrastructure also supporting BlackRock’s BUIDL fund.

 

 

Senator Elizabeth Warren is not letting up. Not after the GENIUS Act. Not after the CLARITY Act. Not after nine crypto firms got federal trust charters. And certainly not after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency spent the better part of five months quietly waving through some of the biggest names in digital assets.

 

On Monday, the Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee fired off a sharply worded letter to OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould, accusing his agency of violating the National Bank Act by granting trust charters to at least nine crypto companies, including Coinbase, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, Crypto.com, Stripe subsidiary Bridge, and Protego. The letter, dated May 18, demands a full accounting of the approvals, along with any communications between OCC officials and the White House or Trump family members, by June 1.

 

Regulatory Arbitrage, or Smart Business?

At the core of Warren's complaint is a fairly pointed argument: these companies are behaving like banks while holding charters that do not require them to operate like banks. National trust companies are, by design, more limited than full-service institutions. They cannot take FDIC-insured deposits. They do not engage in traditional commercial lending. They are supposed to focus on fiduciary work, managing assets on behalf of clients.

 

But Warren says the business plans she reviewed tell a different story. Several of the approved firms appear to be pursuing stablecoin issuance, custodial services, payments processing, and lending activities that resemble full-scale banking operations more than traditional trust work. She argues this creates systemic risk and amounts to regulatory arbitrage, writing: “These companies are effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank.”

 

That argument becomes harder to justify with how the modern banking system already operates. Under fractional reserve banking, traditional banks are permitted to lend out the vast majority of depositor funds while holding only a fraction in reserve, prioritizing leverage, liquidity, and profit generation over true one-to-one custody of customer assets. Critics argue that Warren is defending a legacy system built on counterparty risk while attacking crypto firms that, in many cases, are attempting to offer more transparent and fully reserved financial infrastructure.

 

The OCC has not responded to requests for comment. Gould, for his part, has been publicly bullish on the move toward crypto integration. When the agency announced its first wave of five conditional charter approvals back in December 2025, he framed it as a win for consumers and competition. "New entrants into the federal banking sector are good for consumers, the banking industry and the economy," he said at the time.

 

The Trump Angle Warren Will Not Ignore

There is a political dimension here that Warren has been pushing hard, and it involves the Trump family directly. World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family, is reportedly in the final stages of receiving a conditional OCC approval of its own. Warren and Gould clashed over the pending application at a Senate hearing in February, when Gould declined to commit to delaying or denying it. Warren, visibly frustrated, called him an accomplice to what she described as presidential corruption.

 

In her latest letter, Warren went further, requesting all emails, text messages, meeting summaries, and call transcripts between OCC staff and Trump, his immediate family, or anyone acting on their behalf, specifically as they relate to any of the nine approved charters. It is a broad ask, and one that almost certainly will not be met without a fight.

 

Industry Momentum Has Not Slowed Warren Down

The crypto industry has had a genuinely strong stretch in Washington. The GENIUS Act, which created a federal framework for stablecoin issuance, passed into law last year and was hailed across the industry as a landmark moment. The SEC under Chair Paul Atkins has signaled major regulatory relief, including a potential innovation exemption for tokenized securities. Crypto-friendly appointments have reshaped several key agencies.

 

And still, Warren keeps pushing back. Her office has framed the GENIUS Act as legislation that creates "light-touch regulation for crypto banks" while weakening the consumer protections that took decades to build. The trust charter campaign fits neatly into that critique. From Warren's perspective, every charter granted to a Coinbase or a Ripple is another step toward a two-tiered financial system, where traditional banks operate under strict rules while crypto firms get a cheaper, faster path into the same market.

 

What Happens Next

The June 1 deadline Warren has set is more political theater than hard deadline. The OCC is not legally obligated to respond on her timeline. But the letter sets up a paper trail, and if the agency stonewalls or the World Liberty Financial approval comes through before then, expect Warren to take that back to the committee floor.

 

The broader question, one that neither side has fully answered, is whether the OCC's chartering activity actually violates the National Bank Act or whether it represents a reasonable interpretation of existing authority. The agency has defended the charters as consistent with prior interpretive letters, some dating back to 2021. Lawyers on both sides will be watching the OCC's formal response closely, assuming one comes.

 

For crypto firms, the political noise is mostly background at this point. Charters have been granted. Business plans are moving forward. But Warren's sustained pressure does carry real risk, particularly if Democrats gain ground in 2026 midterms or if any of the chartered institutions runs into trouble. In this regulatory environment, one high-profile failure could reframe the entire debate very quickly.

 

KRWQ, a stablecoin pegged to the South Korean won, is expanding to Solana following a recent announcement from IQ, the company behind the stablecoin.

 

The expansion, according to IQ, is aimed at enhancing KRWQ support for various Korean won-denominated trading applications on Solana, including perpetual futures, on-chain foreign exchange markets, arbitrage strategies, cross-margin trading, and other institutional and algorithmic trading systems and applications.

 

 

“The Korean won is a major global currency with substantial activity in offshore derivatives markets, yet it has remained largely inaccessible in crypto native trading systems,” IQ said in a statement to reporters. “KRWQ allows market participants to trade, hedge, and deploy capital using Korean won liquidity directly on chain.”

 

Regarding its decision to launch KRWQ on Solana, the IQ team cited Solana’s low latency and deep liquidity as key reasons for selecting the network.

 

“Solana provides the performance and ecosystem depth needed to scale KRW liquidity on chain,” said Dave Shin, chief operating officer of KRWQ. “We are seeing clear demand for non-USD trading pairs, particularly in derivatives.”

 

As KRWQ’s adoption continues to grow among both retail and institutional users, IQ expects increased usage of the stablecoin across a wide range of applications, including cross-border settlements and advanced trading systems.

 

About the KRWQ stablecoin 

KRWQ is a stablecoin developed by IQ in collaboration with Frax Finance, a notable decentralized finance project. It was created with the main goal of bringing the Korean won (KRW) onto the chain.

 

By enabling 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and low-cost on-chain transactions, KRWQ addresses major inefficiencies in offshore KRW trading, increasing demand for and use of KRW in global payments and decentralized finance, while reducing dependence on US dollar-pegged stablecoins.

 

Since its launch in October 2025, KRWQ has rapidly gained traction as the first on-chain settlement layer for Korean won trading, expanding beyond Base, its initial deployment chain, and going live on Fraxtal, Codex, Morph, and Hydrex. KRWQ was also recently listed on EDX Markets, an institutional-focused cryptocurrency exchange, across spot and perpetual futures.

 

KRWQ now has a spot trading volume of nearly $40 billion and a Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF) market worth about $60 billion.