Stablecoin

Coinbase Ventures outlined nine investment focus areas for 2026, including real-world asset perpetuals, unsecured lending protocols, and AI development tools. The announcement comes as third-quarter crypto venture funding reached $4.65 billion, marking a 290% increase from the previous quarter, according to Galaxy Digital.

Latin America's largest crypto exchange, Bitso, will introduce a multi-platform perpetuals aggregator and its own token in 2026. The Mexico-based platform's retail user base expanded by over 12% in 2024 to reach 9 million customers, driven by surging stablecoin adoption across the region.

KakaoBank has advanced its Korean won-pegged stablecoin project into active development, according to Newspim. The digital bank, part of South Korean tech conglomerate Kakao, is recruiting blockchain backend developers with expertise in smart contracts and token standards. The move follows similar initiatives by competitor Naver, which is reportedly pursuing a merger with Upbit, the country's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

The South African Reserve Bank has identified cryptocurrency assets and stablecoins as emerging financial stability threats, citing rapid domestic adoption and incomplete regulatory frameworks. As of July, the country's three largest crypto exchanges recorded 7.8 million registered users collectively holding approximately $1.5 billion in client assets by year-end 2024.

Ethena's USDe stablecoin saw total value locked decline from $14.8 billion in October to $7.6 billion, a contraction exceeding 50%. The drawdown occurred as annual percentage yields compressed to approximately 5.1%, falling below the 5.4% cost of borrowing USDC on Aave. The shift triggered unwinding of leveraged carry-trade positions that had previously driven growth.

A House Judiciary Committee Democrats staff report released November 24, 2025, alleges President Trump generated over $800 million from cryptocurrency ventures during the first half of 2025. The report claims enforcement actions were dropped against at least nine companies that invested in Trump's crypto projects or contributed to his campaign. The investigation examined three major operations: World Liberty Financial, the $TRUMP memecoin, and Trump Media's bitcoin treasury.

The South African Reserve Bank has identified regulatory gaps in its oversight of digital assets as a growing threat to financial stability. Stablecoin trading volumes in the country surged from under 4 billion rand in 2022 to nearly 80 billion rand by October 2024. The central bank and National Treasury are developing stricter cross-border crypto regulations expected to take effect in 2025.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission authorized Polymarket to resume U.S. operations as a regulated intermediated exchange through an Amended Order of Designation. Spot XRP exchange-traded funds launched by Grayscale and Franklin Templeton attracted combined net inflows exceeding $130 million on Monday. Swedish fintech firm Klarna announced plans to introduce a USD-backed stablecoin on the Tempo blockchain by 2026.

USDT0, a Tether-pegged omnichain stablecoin issued by Everdawn Labs, has surpassed $50 billion in cumulative transfers across 15 blockchain networks. The milestone was reached 10 months after its January 2025 launch using LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard. Over one-fifth of the total volume was transferred in the past month alone, with more than 415,000 transactions completed since debut.

MegaETH's USDm stablecoin pre-deposit launch on Tuesday faced multiple technical disruptions, including a bridge outage and a multisig configuration error. The misconfigured 4-of-4 signature threshold allowed premature execution of a cap-increase transaction, causing deposits to reopen 34 minutes early and surpass $400 million before the team stabilized operations. MegaETH has since canceled plans to raise the cap to $1 billion and will offer a withdrawal option to affected users.