Stablecoin

On Wednesday, a House of Lords committee urged the UK to advance stablecoin oversight while avoiding measures that could suppress the nascent market for pound sterling-pegged tokens. The panel warned that overly restrictive requirements—such as proposed caps on wallet holdings and forcing issuers into zero-interest central bank deposits—could undermine competitiveness and leave the UK trailing the US and EU.

Coinbase said on June 2 that Checkout.com will let eligible merchants across its 1,000+ enterprise-customer network accept USDC and USDT through their existing checkout flows. Merchants can add stablecoin payments without a separate crypto build while continuing to settle in U.S. dollars. The rollout is positioned as a way to gauge how much demand "digital dollars" can attract in everyday online commerce.

On June 2, 2026, the U.S. Treasury's OFAC sanctioned Nobitex and three other Iran-based crypto exchanges, alongside four Iranian nationals, escalating compliance pressure around Iran-linked crypto activity. Treasury said Nobitex accounted for more than 50% of Iran's digital-asset inflows in 2025, while Ramzinex processed over $2.45B in transactions, raising screening expectations for firms with exposure to the named platforms.

Coinbase Ventures said it bought ENA on the open market and entered a partnership with Ethena to develop onchain finance and savings products for a combined user base of more than 100 million. Ethena said the first growth initiative tied to the collaboration is set to launch the week of June 8, 2026, though no product details or deal terms were disclosed. Ethena reports about $5.4 billion in TVL and roughly $983 million in cumulative fees since launch, alongside a token market cap of over $825 million.

Stablecoin usage is expanding beyond trading, with filtered transaction velocity reaching a record 49.7 times annualized as supply stands near $320 billion and filtered volume totals $6.64 trillion in under five months. Meanwhile, spot bitcoin ETFs have recorded peak-to-date drawdowns of $6.6 billion since outflows began in October 2025, and ethereum ETF flows weakened through much of May 2026.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reposted a prior idea to move stablecoins away from using the U.S. dollar as the default reference point. He proposed user-specific baskets of prediction market shares, assembled from each person's spending patterns, as the stability anchor. The post also revisits his earlier concerns about USD dependence, oracle security, and incentives when staked ETH is used as collateral.

Franklin Templeton and Moonpay formed a strategic partnership linking the Benji Technology Platform with Moonpay Trade’s institutional execution stack. Eligible institutions can swap between supported stablecoins and Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market funds onchain, adding liquidity and operational flexibility for treasury and collateral workflows. Franklin Templeton reported $1.74 trillion in AUM as of April 30, 2026, while Moonpay said it serves 30 million customers across 180 countries.

Ripple said it expanded its USD-backed stablecoin RLUSD into Türkiye on June 2, 2026, listing it through local partners BiLira, Bitexen, and Bitlo. The company is targeting a market it says sees nearly $200 billion in annual crypto transaction volume and is currently led by USDT and USDC. Ripple also cited RLUSD’s $1.7bn+ market cap as part of its broader global rollout.

South Africa’s central bank and market regulator said on June 2, 2026 that crypto assets and stablecoins do not qualify as legal tender under the National Payments System Act. They said the IFWG will study rand-pegged stablecoin use cases by late 2026, while signaling foreign currency-pegged stablecoins are unlikely to be accepted for domestic payments due to dollarization risk.

The US Senate has returned from recess with the Digital Asset Clarity Act prioritized, a proposal that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC without explicit congressional authorization. The bill previously passed the House in July 2025 and later advanced through Senate Agriculture in January and Senate Banking in May on a 15–9 vote, with some lawmakers now projecting a possible floor vote by August. Supporters argue the change would favor private stablecoin issuers such as USDT and USDC, while negotiations are expected to hinge on provisions including ethics language and rules around yield or rewards.