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:

• LayerZero Launches “Zero” L1 for Institutional-Scale Onchain Markets
• MoonPay Partners With Deel for Stablecoin Payroll
• Conduit Brings USDC to Onafriq’s Pan-African Treasury Network
• Money Code Ep 19: Why Building a Global Venmo with Stablecoins is Still Hard w/ Mike Hudack (Sling)
• Product launches, partnerships and funding news from Anchorage Digital, Avenia, Blockchain.com, Citi, Franklin Templeton, Ondo, Paxos Labs, Robinhood, Securitize, t-0 Network, and more.

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🏆 Top Stories

LayerZero Launches “Zero” L1 for Institutional-Scale Onchain Markets

LayerZero Labs announced “Zero,” a new Layer-1 blockchain positioned as a multi-core world computer for global financial markets. Zero uses a heterogeneous architecture that decouples execution from verification via zero-knowledge proofs and the Jolt framework, claiming up to 2M TPS per zone and near-zero transaction costs.

The project is backed by Citadel Securities, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Intercontinental Exchange, Google Cloud, and ARK Invest. Mainnet is targeted for fall 2026.

Why it matters

• From middleware to full-stack market infrastructure: LayerZero is moving up the stack from omnichain messaging into owning an execution venue plus native connectivity back to 165+ chains, a bid to control where liquidity moves and where activity settles.
• Execution-decoupling is the core technical bet: Zero explicitly targets the replication bottleneck by separating heavy execution from lightweight verification via ZK proofs, aiming to unlock “multi-core” parallelism rather than single-threaded L1 limits.
• Zones are a unification strategy, not more fragmentation: Specialized environments (EVM apps, privacy payments, trading) let them optimize for conflicting requirements while keeping state, governance, and composability under one umbrella, reducing rollup-style value leakage.
• Institutional trading and settlement is the lead wedge: The partner mix (Citadel, DTCC, ICE) signals a focus on market structure, 24/7 venues, collateral, clearing, and settlement, with payments as a parallel zone rather than the headline product.
• Positioning is closest to Canton, with payments overlap: The core narrative is institutional market infrastructure (more Canton-adjacent), but the privacy-capable payments zone competes for stablecoin flows that payment chains like Tempo and Circle’s Arc are targeting.

MoonPay Partners With Deel for Stablecoin Payroll

MoonPay partnered with Deel to enable stablecoin salary payouts for Deel’s global workforce. Starting March 2026, workers in the UK and EU can opt to receive part or all of their wages in stablecoins into non-custodial wallets, with U.S. rollout planned next.

MoonPay provides fiat-to-stablecoin conversion, on-chain delivery, and off-ramp infrastructure via its Iron division, while Deel retains payroll processing, compliance, and HR controls. Deel supports 40,000+ businesses and processed $22B in payroll in 2025.

Why it matters

If this scales, payroll becomes one of the first mainstream, opt-in on-ramps for stablecoins inside regulated corporate systems. Payroll sits at the start of the circular flow of money, when wages are paid in stablecoins, more of a worker’s cash balance can remain onchain and off-ramp only when needed. That is a concrete step toward building an onchain liquidity flywheel.

• Embedded distribution: Deel’s 40,000 employers become a default channel for stablecoin wages across Europe.
• Real-world use case: Payroll is recurring, high-volume, and trust-sensitive, testing stablecoins beyond trading and remittances.
• Self-custody at scale: Workers receive funds directly to non-custodial wallets, bypassing traditional banking rails.
• Infrastructure layering: MoonPay abstracts conversion and settlement, letting HR platforms integrate stablecoins without becoming crypto-native.

Conduit Brings USDC to Onafriq’s Pan-African Treasury Network

Conduit partnered with Onafriq to integrate USDC-based settlement into Onafriq’s cross-border treasury operations. Onafriq operates across 40+ African countries and connects ~1B mobile wallets, ~500M bank accounts, and 400k agents, positioning it as one of the continent’s largest interoperable payment routing layers. 

In phase one, Conduit will help Onafriq use USDC to fund accounts, rebalance liquidity, and convert to USD via off-ramps, reducing reliance on multi-day SWIFT settlement. Over time, the partners plan to expand into broader liquidity management, real-time interoperable trade across African currencies, and faster payouts.

Why it matters:

This is stablecoins as treasury middleware at continental scale. If this scales, stablecoins become embedded in Africa’s payment plumbing, invisible to users but material to capital efficiency and settlement speed.

• Backend before frontend: Stablecoins are being adopted first for internal settlement and treasury optimization, not as consumer-facing money.
• New liquidity stack: USDC in, compliant off-ramps out, local rails for distribution. The blockchain is the transport layer; orchestration and fiat access remain the moat.
• Selective correspondent displacement: Dependence on multi-hop banking chains compresses at the margin, while regulated fiat endpoints still anchor the system.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 19: Why Building a Global Venmo with Stablecoins is Still Hard w/ Mike Hudack (Sling)

The core problem with global money movement is that everyone is keeping their own ledger and the world is stuck reconciling incompatible databases. Blockchains solve that, but only partially.

Mike Hudack, CEO and co-founder of Sling Money, has built products at Facebook, Deliveroo, and Monzo, and now he is applying that product lens to what stablecoins change at the system level. Sling is live in 120+ countries and is trying to make cross-border transfers feel like a few taps, while fighting the real bottlenecks: ramps, identity, fraud, and trust.

We decode:

• How do stablecoins turn cross-border payments into an interoperability problem rather than a prefunding problem?
• Why is “self-custodial” legally hard, and what does it force you to change in UX and security?
• What happens when instant global transfers collide with fraud and AML constraints designed for slower rails?

What you’ll get:

• Understand the real scaling constraints for a “global Venmo” product: ramps, IDV/KYC, localization, and fincrime ops
• See how stablecoin selection (liquidity, compatibility, regulation, brand) becomes part of user trust, and Mike’s hot take on branded stablecoins

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

Franklin Templeton and SWIFT say the future of banking is 24/7 and natively on-chain (read more)

Tether Launches First Public Map of USD₮’s Ecosystem Worldwide (read more)

The market cap of tokenized commodities surpassed $6 billion (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

Avenia raises $17M Series A (read more)

Levl Secures $7M Seed Round to Bridge Traditional and Crypto Payments (read more)

Tether has announced four investments in the past week, converting stablecoin cash flow into ecosystem control

• LayerZero LabsStrategic equity investment (amount undisclosed) in the cross-chain interoperability protocol used by USD₮ and XAU₮, reinforcing multi-chain liquidity and institutional integrations. (read more)
• t-0 NetworkStrategic investment (amount undisclosed) into a USD₮-powered cross-border settlement platform for licensed financial institutions. (read more)
• Gold.com – $150M~12% minority stake to integrate XAU₮ and enable physical gold purchases via USD₮ and USA₮.
• Anchorage Digital – $100MStrategic equity investment deepening collaboration around regulated custody and U.S.-compliant stablecoin issuance, including USA₮. (read more)

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

BlackRock offers DeFi trading for the first time, buys Uniswap tokens (read more)

Bridge Goes Live with Plasma, Starting with USDT via Orchestration APIs (read more)

Citi Brings Bill of Exchange Onchain, Issuance to Settlement on Solana (read more)

Conduit and Onafriq Join Forces to Enable Stablecoin Payments Across 40+ African Countries (read more)

eSui Dollar (suiUSDe) Goes Live on Sui, Powered by Ethena Whitelabel (read more)

Franklin Templeton, Binance roll out program letting institutions use tokenized money funds as trading collateral (read more)

LayerZero is building its Zero chain with partners including Citadel Securities, DTCC, and ICE. (read more)

LMAX unveils new exchange to break the wall down between crypto and FX (read more)

MoonPay Launches "MoonPay Deposits" to Simplify Wallet-to-Wallet Crypto Transfers, Now Available in Wallet in Telegram (read more)

MoonPay wants to help 40,000 businesses in UK and EU pay workers in stablecoins (read more)

Paxos Labs’ USAD Goes Live on Aleo Mainnet, a USDG-Backed Stablecoin for Private Onchain Finance (read more)

Paxos Partners with Confirmo to bring compliant, enterprise-ready stablecoin payments to US businesses. (read more)

Robinhood Launches Public Testnet for Ethereum Layer 2 Blockchain (read more)

Securitize Partners with STBL, Hamilton Lane and OKX Ventures to Launch RWA-Backed Stablecoin on X Layer (read more)

Stripe adds x402 integration for USDC agent payments on Base (read more)

t-0 network, backed by Tether, launches peer-to-peer USDT settlement network (read more)

Tokenized Equities Go Live as Collateral on Euler, Powered by Ondo, Sentora, and Chainlink (read more)

UK Treasury Selects HSBC's Orion Blockchain Platform for Digital Bonds Pilot (read more)

Volt Launches Stablecoin Payments for UK Merchants (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Blockchain.com wins UK registration nearly four years after abandoning FCA process (read more)

China Bars Unapproved Issuance of Yuan Stablecoins Abroad (read more)

EU seeks ban on Russian crypto assets to curb sanctions evasion (read more)

Hong Kong ready to issue first stablecoin licenses in March, Financial Secretary says (read more)

Malaysia's central bank to launch three stablecoin and tokenized deposit initiatives in 2026 (read more)

US Banking Association Urges OCC to Pause Crypto Trust Charter Approvals Until GENIUS Act Rules Finalized (read more)

🍻 Upcoming Events

• Wednesday 25 February, Mexico City: Stablecon Roadshow by Rain and VelaFi @ Mexico Fintech Week 2026

📖 Reads of the Week

The stablecoin use cases LATAM actually wants

MoneyGram’s new vision: MoneyGram 3.0: The Global Payments Network for Everyone