Welcome to another edition of the Money Code newsletter (fka The Weekly Stable), the essential source of stablecoin news coverage for global fintech professionals, brought to you by This Week in Fintech and Stablecon.

This week we cover:

• Fidelity’s FIDD Stablecoin Is An Income Statement Play
• Tether Launches USA₮, A U.S. Regulated Stablecoin Via Anchorage
• 🎙️ Money Code Ep 17: What It Takes for Stablecoins to Scale at Checkout w/ Jess Houlgrave (WalletConnect)
• Product launches, partnerships and funding news from Aleo, alfred, Bleap, Checkout.com, Flutterwave, Kraken, OKX, OSL Group, Papaya Global and more.

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🏆 Top Stories

Fidelity’s FIDD Stablecoin Is An Income Statement Play

Fidelity announced Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), a $1-redeemable stablecoin launching on Ethereum. The product targets institutional and eligible retail users, and positions Fidelity to use stablecoins across its brokerage, wealth, and digital asset platforms.

Why it matters

The first question everyone asks is “how big does it get?” Market cap will not be the full story. There are two ways to win:

• Captured balances and platform efficiency: tokenize Fidelity customer cash so dollars move 24/7 across Fidelity-controlled workflows.
• External liquidity: make FIDD widely accepted and liquid outside Fidelity.

Fidelity can be very successful on the first without winning the second, driving better retention and monetization even if external adoption is limited.

• Walled garden advantage: Fidelity can dogfood FIDD across brokerage, wealth, and institutional workflows where it controls distribution and integration.
• Institutional cash management wedge: custody, controls, reporting, and reserve management are Fidelity’s natural strengths.
• DeFi is not the first act: most Fidelity customers are not DeFi-native, and DeFi dollar liquidity remains largely USDC-native.

Stablecoins are becoming features for large financial platforms. Market cap can grow as Fidelity tokenizes its own balances, but success will be measured on the income statement.

Tether Launches USA₮, A U.S. Regulated Stablecoin Via Anchorage

Tether announced USA₮ (USAT), a U.S.-market dollar stablecoin designed to operate under the GENIUS Act framework, with Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. as issuer and Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian. USAT began rolling out across major venues including Kraken, OKX, Crypto.com, and Bybit, with additional listings announced by Bitfinex and HTX.

Why it matters

Tether is effectively splitting its dollar strategy: offshore scale (USDT) plus an onshore, federally-aligned token (USAT)

• USDC is the target, distribution matters: USAT will compete directly with Circle/USDC in the US, but outcomes likely hinge on listings, banking rails, institutional onboarding, and liquidity depth more than token features.
• Two-lane strategy: USDT remains the global scale product, USAT adds a U.S.-regulated lane. If uptake is strong, more issuers may adopt similar “multi-regime” setups.
• Trust is group-level: Even with separate issuance and custody, markets may still evaluate risk at the broader Tether-complex level, which can show up in liquidity and pricing dynamics.
• Scrutiny remains a factor: A compliant wrapper can ease onboarding, but counterparties and regulators will still monitor governance, reserves, and operational controls closely, particularly early on.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 17: What It Takes for Stablecoins to Scale at Checkout w/ Jess Houlgrave (WalletConnect)

Turning on stablecoin payments is easy. Getting merchants, acquirers, and consumers to choose it is the hard part. 

Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect, explains how WalletConnect Pay and the Ingenico partnership aim to make on-chain payments feel like a normal checkout flow while handling the unglamorous constraints behind the scenes: compliant routing, off-ramps, merchant onboarding, and incentives that shift behavior. 

The open question is whether the incentive stack can get every player to move when the biggest economic upside sits with the merchant.

We decode:

• How do you get consumers to actually pay on-chain when stablecoin cards already “work” and require no behavior change?
• What’s the acquirer’s reason to turn this on and push it, and how do fees, interchange-like economics, and incentives get funded without recreating the card fee stack?
• What happens when checkout goes on-chain and transparency collides with the privacy expectations of shoppers and merchants, including public companies?

What you’ll get:

• Walk away with a working model of how to scale merchant acceptance for stablecoins
• See the end-to-end checkout path: QR/NFC UX, transit accounts, compliance checks, and how merchants get paid.
• Understand the incentive math: cashback, on-chain interchange, and how to give acquirers a reason to push it.

Give it a listen and share your feedback by sending me a DM or replying to this email. 

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Read on for a round up of this week’s news:

📊 Market Trends

Circle’s USYC Overtakes Securitize’s Tokenized BUIDL in Market Cap. (read more)

Crypto payments adoption spearheaded by large businesses, PayPal survey finds (read more)

Ethereum Leads Onchain Lending With ~$28B in Active Loans, ~10x Ahead of Rivals (read more)

Institutional crypto adoption has passed the ‘point of reversibility,’ PwC says (read more)

McKinsey & Artemis study: Stablecoins moved $35 trillion last year but only 1% of it was for 'real world' payments (read more)

Russia’s ruble-pegged stablecoin helped evade sanctions to the tune of $100 billion (read more)

Tokenized Gold Hits Record Highs as Tether Gold and Pax Gold Surge Over 5% (read more)

USDC Hits New All-Time High in Monthly Transaction Volume by Late January (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

alfred Raises $15M in Series A Funding (read more)

Bleap raise $6 million seed round to expand onchain finance app (read more)

Checkout.com Acquires Licensed Euro Stablecoin Issuer Blue EMI (read more)

OSL Group Secures $200M Funding to Expand Global Stablecoin Operations (read more)

Securitize Files S-4 for SPAC Merger, Shows 841% Revenue Growth (read more)

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

1Money Teams Up with M0 to Launch Custom Stablecoin Issuance Service (read more)

BitGo Partners with Crescite to Launch Catholic USD™ Stablecoin for Religious Institutions (read more)

Canada’s largest digital asset custodian, Balance, has integrated Aave. (read more)

Coinbase Tests Custom Stablecoin Feature with Flipcash's USDF (read more)

FalconX and OpenEden Launch $PRISM Tokenized Yield Portfolio (read more)

Fidelity Investments Is Launching Its First Stablecoin on the Ethereum Network (read more)

Flutterwave partners with Turnkey to provide stablecoin balances and regulated payment options (read more)

Kraken rolls out 'DeFi Earn' in US, EU and Canada tapping yield-bearing Veda vaults (read more)

Papaya Global Launches Global Workforce Wallet Powered by Fireblocks (read more)

Stablecoins seen as ‘the default’ for payments as OKX brings crypto card to Europe (read more)

Swiss banking giant UBS planning to offer crypto services to specific clients (read more)

Tether Announces the Launch of USA₮, the Federally Regulated, Dollar-Backed Stablecoin, Made in America (read more)

USDCx launches on mainnet, built by Aleo using Circle’s xReserve. (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Australia's corporate regulator flags risks from rapid innovation in digital assets (read more)

Fipto Becomes Europe’s First Dual-licenced Stablecoin Payment Institution with New MiCA Licence (read more)

Japan's regulator seeks public input on bonds eligible for stablecoin reserves (read more)

Nomura's Laser Digital applies for U.S. national trust bank to offer crypto custody (read more)

Russia to roll out crypto regulatory framework this July, allowing retail participation (read more)

Standard Chartered warns stablecoins could drain $500 billion from U.S. bank deposits by 2028 (read more)

UAE's central bank has approved a USD-backed stablecoin (read more)

UK banks’ anti-crypto stance intensifies even as regulatory process moves forward (read more)

White House to Host Banking and Crypto Summit to Address Stablecoin Legislation (read more)

💬 Posts of the Week