Welcome to another edition of The Weekly Stable, the essential source of stablecoin news coverage for global fintech professionals, brought to you by This Week in Fintech.

This week we cover:

• Tempo Aims to Speed-Run Neutrality — But Stripe Can Win Even If It Doesn’t
• Hyperliquid’s USDH Vote Turns Into Public Stablecoin Showdown
• Product launches, partnerships and regulatory news from Credit Coop, Elliptic, Ethena, Fireblocks, Inversion Capital, Kite, Lead Bank, MegaETH, Nasdaq, Rapyd, Ripple and more. 

Got feedback or suggestions? Reply to this email, find Chuk and Stablecon online, or join the Stablecon community on Telegram. P.S. Get your tickets for Stablecon 2026 

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

🏆 Top Stories

Tempo Aims to Speed-Run Neutrality — But Stripe Can Win Even If It Doesn’t

Stripe and Paradigm’s launch of Tempo, a payments-first L1, sparked one of the most heated debates on crypto Twitter this year. The pitch is clear: a credibly neutral chain, purpose-built for stablecoin payments, with features like stablecoin gas, sub-second finality, and support from design partners including Visa, Deutsche Bank, Nubank, and OpenAI.

The reactions zeroed in on two questions:

1. Can a sponsor-led chain ever be credibly neutral, especially if it starts permissioned? Neutrality means any stablecoin, any provider, and even competitors can use it — and that the network is fully censorship-resistant, even under coercion from regulators or financial institutions. Critics argue any “throat to choke” collapses neutrality, while others think distribution might be enough to earn it over time.
2. Did they need an L1? Some argued Tempo could have achieved its goals on an Ethereum L2 — stablecoin gas, payment lanes, sub-second finality. But implementing all of this via L2s requires complex, unproven combinations at scale. An L1 gives Stripe speed, control, and value capture without dependencies, even if it comes with a trust penalty.

From here, three outcomes look plausible: Tempo stalls, becomes a Stripe-adjacent fiefdom, or achieves neutrality over time. Either way, the launch forces the industry to reckon with whether open rails will win or whether distribution is all you need.

This is a short version of my full analysis published earlier this week. You can read the full piece here.

Hyperliquid’s USDH Vote Turns Into Public Stablecoin Showdown

Hyperliquid, the leading decentralized perpetuals exchange, launched a governance process to award the ticker USDH to one stablecoin issuer. Proposals flooded in from Paxos, Frax, Agora, Native Markets (via Stripe-owned Bridge), Ethena, Sky (ex-MakerDAO), and Bastion. Validators vote on September 14, but the Foundation stressed that USDH will not be the only stablecoin on the platform and holding the ticker does not guarantee long-term adoption.

Why it matters

The weekend frenzy may overstate the significance of a ticker. Real adoption depends on liquidity, integrations, and network effects, not labels. Still, the process surfaced valuable information:

• Transparency dividend: Issuers revealed reserves, compliance models, and revenue splits—essentially free marketing and education for market participants.
• Protocol power move: Hyperliquid is recapturing ~$220M in annual yield currently leaking to USDC balances, showing how venues can internalize stablecoin economics.
• Competitive dynamic: Circle already derives ~7% of USDC supply from Hyperliquid deposits. If USDH or rivals gain share, it could shift revenues and accelerate the platform’s push into protocol-owned money.
• Noise vs. signal: Issuers may still launch competing stablecoins under other tickers. USDHL, a native M0-powered token, already exists, underscoring that adoption is about liquidity and trust, not symbols.

The real winners are Hyperliquid, which captured mindshare and propelled its name into the boardrooms of major financial institutions, and market participants, who now have a clearer picture of how different issuers operate—their capabilities, structures, models, and strategies.

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

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

BBVA Partners with Ripple for Crypto Custody Services in Spain (read more)

Bitcoin and Stablecoins Dominate as India, US Top 2025 Crypto Adoption Index (read more)

Deutsche Bank sets out how stablecoins and tokenisation enter mainstream banking (read more)

Elliptic Unveils Crime-Tracking Tool as Stablecoins Like USDT, USDC Go Mainstream (read more)

Fireblocks and Circle Strategically Collaborate to Accelerate Stablecoin Adoption for Financial Institutions (read more)

MegaETH and Ethena announce USDM, as a part of Ethena's new whitelabel stablecoin offering (read more)

Nasdaq weighs SEC filing to allow tokenized securities (read more)

Rapyd Launches Stablecoin Payment Solutions for Global Business Transactions (read more)

Ripple expands RLUSD to African markets through partnerships with Chipper Cash, VALR, and Yellow Card (read more)

South Korean unicorn fintech Toss plans global push starting in Australia, aims to issue won stablecoin (read more)

Stablecoin Adoption Set to Grow as Regulatory and Accounting Framework Matures (read more)

Stripe and Paradigm announce Tempo a payments-first blockchain (read more)

Tokenization of private credit could unlock transparency and growth (read more)

Fireblocks launches a stablecoin payments network (read more)

Ethena has partnered with Binance to embed USDe across the Binance platform (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

AlloyX Merges with Solowin Holdings at $350 Million Valuation (read more)

Credit Coop Announces $4.5 Million Seed Funding Round to Transform Credit Markets (read more)

Lead Bank raises $70m in Series B at $1.47B valuation (read more)

Kite Raises $18M to Bridge Stablecoin Payments and Autonomous Agents (read more)

StablecoinX Raises Additional $530M, Bringing Total Financing to $890M for Ethena Treasury (read more)

Tetra Digital Raises $10M from Investors including Shopify, Wealthsimple to Create a Regulated Canadian Dollar Stablecoin (read more)

Inversion Capital Raises $26.5M to Bring Private Equity Strategy Into Crypto (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

1Money Secures Major Regulatory Approvals with 34 US Money Transmitter Licenses and Bermuda Class F License (read more)

First-mover advantage key to Hong Kong’s success as multicurrency stablecoin hub, says PwC (read more)

Kazakhstan announces national crypto reserve, pioneers stablecoin payments for regulatory fees (read more)

Nigeria's President Orders Regulatory Oversight of Stablecoins and Digital Currencies (read more)

Venezuela Turns to USDT for Crude Oil Settlements Amid Sanctions (read more)

Market Structure Draft Gets Positive Reviews (read more) 

🍻 Upcoming Events

Stabletalks Riyadh x Stablecon Salon · Luma

Coming to Riyadh for the first-ever Money20/20 Middle East? Don’t miss StableTalks Riyadh x Stablecon Soon— an exclusive side-event bringing together the…

Sorbet

💬 Posts of the Week

📖 Reads of the Week

In The Rails Are Free, The Trains Make Money, Leigh Drogen and Dennis Qian of Starkiller Capital provide a strategic analysis arguing that blockspace has become commoditized and worthless, with value shifting decisively to applications—using Stripe, Hyperliquid, and Amazon’s fulfillment analogy to show why enterprises will build and control their own chains, making fat apps, not fat protocols, the true locus of profit for investors and builders seeking real adoption.