Alan Sun

the first regulated GBP stablecoin, audited by KPMG, assured by Chainlink PoR

[Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc @jerallaire]

Today is a historic day for Circle, and I think symbolic of a much bigger evolution in the architecture of the emerging internet financial system.

Circle has received final approval from the OCC to operate as a national trust bank. We have been granted a charter for First National Digital Currency Bank, NA.

Over 10 years ago, as we were forging the concepts of Circle, we believed a new kind of national bank would ultimately be needed to issue full-reserve dollar digital currency. This was before USDC even existed. The vision was clear: a new base layer of money on the internet would be necessary, and for it to reach widespread use, it needed to operate under national banking supervision.

Years later, after launching USDC and achieving strong product-market fit, I wrote that we sought a charter for a full-reserve digital currency bank. Then, through a half-decade of work with policymakers and regulators, we saw the GENIUS Act codify into federal banking law a framework for these safe, efficient, and technologically superior digital dollars.

Launching and operating as Circle National Trust, we will offer custodial services for digital assets, including stablecoins and other tokenized assets, held to the highest standards afforded under Federal national trust bank supervision.

As the GENIUS Act approaches full implementation in early 2027, we are now poised not only to be supervised by the OCC, as required by law, but to bring critical components of USDC's operation and reserves into this structure.

This is all part of building a new fundamental money layer for the internet. A layer that can scale from an AI agent paying another AI agent in fractions of a second for fractions of a cent, to retail transactions, to investments, trading and lending, to the largest wholesale transactions between global systemically important institutions. All of this needs a form of money and regulated infrastructure that can support the entirety of this new internet-native economic system.

A new architecture for money on the internet has arrived. It is now being hardened into an edifice the world can trust and build on. We are thrilled to be the first of a new cohort of firms establishing this kind of banking infrastructure.

Jeremy

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Ethereum prepares for complete overhaul and biggest upgrade since 'The Merge,' Vitalik Buterin says.

[Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc @jerallaire]

We’ve had lots of questions from our investor community looking for thoughts on OUSD, and so I thought I’d share my direct views here for anyone.

Stablecoin networks are platform and network effect businesses that are established over a long period of time, tend towards winner-take-most market structures, and resemble other internet platform utility markets. There are several layers that drive this.

First, stablecoin networks effectively act as public protocols and software layers on the internet and their network strength is a matter of the number and range of applications and services that integrate to the network. Every time a developer or service provider integrates to the network, it brings more network effects. This attracts more developers and adds more utility and more network effects. This then drives demand for the digital currency itself, which then reinforces these network effects through liquidity network effects.

We have realized this at a massive scale with the USDC network today — thousands upon thousands of services integrate with our network, which in turn provides immense utility not just to each application, but to users as a whole who benefit massively from the reach and interoperability that exists. This drives user and developer preference further. We’ve invested in building that ecosystem over nearly a decade, and now it’s accelerating as mainstream institutions come onto the network, connecting their customers and users.

We add to that utility by building software stacks that further expand and strengthen the network — protocols like CCTP and Gateway, which promote interoperability, safety and liquidity around the world. This expands the target surface area for app builders and developers, making it easy for them to tap into the liquidity and network effects that already exist. We are now seeing that stack get pulled into all kinds of chains, permissioned L2s, networks being built by governments, and so much more.

The second layer is that of liquidity network effects. This is fundamental. Liquidity begets liquidity. For a stablecoin to achieve scale and utility, it needs to be highly liquid, both on a primary basis (e.g., through all the major financial market centers in the world, with world class direct banking liquidity) and on a secondary basis both by being available and tradeable for retail and institutional clients in every geography and against every fiat instrument in the world. People who want to access and move value need to be able to easily get in and out of that digital currency. Here, we’ve invested nearly a decade in building out that liquidity, and it is now entrenched in exchanges, DeFI venues, and with PSPs, payments firms, regional exchanges, and so many others. Establishing these liquidity network effects also involves building global regulatory infrastructure and ensuring that the stablecoin is available under various regimes around the world. Today, USDC is in the top 3 most liquid digital assets in the world, and it falls off sharply after that. BTC, USDT and USDC have extraordinary liquidity. The closest other dollar stables are like 10x smaller and that liquidity tends to be concentrated in promotional books in a single exchange, whereas USDC liquidity is dispersed widely across dozens and dozens of surfaces. Building this liquidity has been a nearly decade-long task that we continue.

A third layer of network strength comes from the deep integration with the policy and regulatory environment — in many cases, years of effort to build licensing (e.g., USDC is the only large global stablecoin currently available in all of Europe or Japan), and more regimes for stablecoins are coming online, with Circle leading the way in ensuring that USDC is officially recognized, registered, licensed and accepted in the most important markets in the world. On the back of this is the work of building global banking, reserve management and treasury and liquidity management that can operate this on a nearly 24/7 basis in markets and banking systems globally. This globalization effort is a massive investment that we have made over the years.

All of these investments by Circle and our global ecosystem of thousands of partners have delivered the net result of providing the world’s most trusted and available digital dollar infrastructure—a utility that any user, developer, or business can freely and easily tap into. And we do not intend to slow down.

All of this compounds and shows in the numbers. In Q1 2026, according to third-party analysts (Artemis) who track stablecoin adoption, USDC handled nearly $30T in onchain transactions, representing 80% of all dollar stablecoin transactions on blockchains. USDT handled the remaining 20% of transactions. All of the combined remaining dollar stablecoins handled a total of 0% of transactions (i.e., < 0.5%). While other stablecoins may have some circulation, most of that is through promotions and incentives, the actual usage is extremely limited—because of the extremely limited liquidity and network utility that exists for these coins.

But my thoughts on the competitive landscape are not just about the strength of our network—there are also considerations around any new initiative.

Several perspectives and positioning have been shared about how something like OUSD improves on something like USDC.

1) Free mint and burn. The argument suggests that existing stablecoins charge burn fees, and payments firms should not need to pay these (despite the fact that the entire payment industry is built on small bps fees on various ingress and egress points on their networks). There are structural market realities built around the fact that some stablecoins impose very large redemption fees and have limited redemption facilities – the impact of this is that stablecoins with strong redemption facilities, good liquidity and no fees become the offramp for their competitor stablecoins. It may seem easy to say one will offer unlimited and free redeems, however market reality likely forces other behavior. This can be addressed – and is addressed by Circle – through contractual mechanisms vs. a blanket fee exemption.

2) Everybody wins and shares. While this sounds good in principle, the reality of the market and market opportunity is quite different. Today, Circle shares the majority of its income with its distribution partners, and we continue to lean hard into expanding those partnerships with leading companies across every sector of the market. However, we also retain significant income that allows us to invest in the massive market infrastructure that makes this such a powerful and valuable utility for the world to build on. Giving away all the income is a recipe for starving an infrastructure, systematically underinvesting and ensuring that your platform will remain limited in scope.

Furthermore, Circle believes that the future stablecoin market is likely several orders of magnitude larger than it is today. We’re actively bringing partners into the USDC ecosystem through a diverse and growing set of partnership models that span our work with exchanges, custodians, payments firms, asset issuers and more. We are excited to continue to build with a “big tent mentality” where the entire ecosystem can grow value together.

3) A consortium where everybody has a voice. Perhaps I have a cynical view, but the track record of consortium products achieving scale, P/M Fit or even basic product agility is absolutely dismal, and while there are examples of financial consortia that operate utilities, they are predictably slow moving. Large groups of large companies coordinate poorly, have misaligned incentives, slow things down and rarely create the space for real durable innovation and competitiveness. They also typically, out of their own self-interest, starve the consortium itself on an operating basis. We actually tried this in the early days of USDC, and even with a very small group, ran into endless challenges and complexity. Smaller, tighter strategic collaborations and commercial partnership arrangements with product and platform builders that can drive forward independently will almost always outcompete large consortiums. But oftentimes when these get formed, everyone feels like they should put their logo on the list, kiss the ring, and make noise about openness. But typically those same firms will turn to their operating units and make the best decisions for their customers, which often means partnering with the market leader and building durable win-win partnerships.

There’s also been a bunch of commentary on Circle's partnership with Coinbase and what this all means. Our stablecoin partnership with Coinbase remains as strong as ever, and I think we both see that enormous opportunity ahead to expand the USDC network.

A final comment: Circle remains committed to supporting a wide range of different products and infrastructures, even when we might compete with different aspects of those partners’ products in other areas of our business. With OUSD, we work closely with many of the founding members, and we expect that those same members will remain large USDC partners and customers. At the same time, as Circle has diversified our product and platform stack, expanding across Arc, CCTP, CPN, StableFX, Agent Stack and many other areas, we continue to expand the partnerships and collaboration with many other stablecoin issuers — dozens of them — to help them launch on Arc, leverage our interoperability infrastructure, get supported in our Wallets and become settlement and FX options on CPN and StableFX.

We are huge believers in growth in the stablecoin ecosystem and welcome OUSD as a new member of the community!

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Elon Musk is now worth more than Bitcoin's entire market cap.

Elon Musk: $1.4 trillion
Bitcoin: $1.3 trillion

[Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team @MercedesAMGF1]

Same pose, same person, same place 🇲🇨

Young Kimi would be proud 🏆

[CoinDesk @CoinDesk]

INSIGHT: Benchmark-StoneX senior analyst, Mark Palmer says @Strategy sold 0.004% of its $BTC to prove to S&amp;P it could.

[Bloomberg TV @BloombergTV]

Out of this world: @edludlow explains the space-based challenges of orbital data centers, even as SpaceX wants to deploy 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity in orbit https://t.co/M82NHK2Iu4

[Bloomberg TV @BloombergTV]

Anthropic raised $65 billion in a funding round that valued the artificial intelligence company at $965 billion including the new investment, eclipsing rival OpenAI’s value for the first time. @EdLudlow reports on "Bloomberg The Close" https://t.co/b7Zp5vyXSY

[Reuters Business @ReutersBiz]

The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq posted record closing highs after news reports said the US and Iran had reached a draft agreement to extend their ceasefire for 60 days. READ: https://t.co/4sJaytoRfo

[Bloomberg @business]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was spotted eating Beijing’s famous fried bean sauce noodles.

Huang, who is in Beijing as part of Donald Trump’s state visit to China, seemed perfectly content relishing the local staple right on the sidewalk. Follow our coverage from the summit: https://t.co/1iWZ8HUYsK

[CoinDesk @CoinDesk]

SCOOP: @Binance CMO Rachel Conlan is leaving the company on June 15 after three years, a week after joining us at Consensus 2026 in Miami.

Former Trust Wallet CEO @EowynChen steps in as interim CMO, @ianallison23 reports.

She was on stage at @consensus2026 last week. Here's what she said:

[Stani @StaniKulechov]

Aave is my life's work and we're working nonstop to find the best possible outcome for users.

I’m personally contributing 5000 ETH to DeFi United as we continue working together with partners on formalizing more commitments. I’m working to see this resolved and market conditions normalized as soon as possible.

DeFi United.

[Jocy@IOSGVC @jocyiosg]

𝗗𝗲𝗙𝗶 历史上最危险的囚徒困境

$2.3亿USD坏账悬而未决。Aave Collector 持有超过$2亿流动资产，LayerZero 刚完成$1.2亿融资——两家都完全有能力赔付。Aave在不到两天内已经流失了 $84.5亿 TVL，整个 DeFi 蒸发了 $132亿。每多拖一天，这个数字还在扩大。

但没有任何一方回应被盗的资产谁来负责，没有任何一方表态。他们在互相博弈，而整个 DeFi 在流血。

𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 年的 𝗗𝗲𝗙𝗶 精神去哪了？

2020年3月12日，ETH 跌到 $80，链上清算拍卖因流拍价格一度归零，MakerDAO 面临系统性崩溃。当时 MKR 基金会站出来提议拍卖 MKR 回购 ETH 填补坏账，社区大户纷纷参与竞拍。

那一次，以太坊社区和 DeFi 精神让所有人引以为傲——危机面前有人担当，有人行动。

今天呢？沉默。

我身边很多朋友不只是从 Aave 撤资——连 Spark、甚至其他 DeFi 协议的资金都在撤出。他们不是恐慌，他们是在用脚投票：如果这个生态连 260M的事情都没人愿意站出来解决，凭什么还要把钱放在这里？

这些资金一旦离开，就再也不会回来。

过去 Aave 经历过很多治理危机，社区里持有不同意见的人很多，分歧从来没断过。但今天不是争论治理哲学的时候。回望 DeFi Summer 的繁荣，回望我们共同构建的这个去中心化金融世界——我们走到今天不容易。DeFi 的未来不应该毁在一次沉默里。

这不是 Aave 一家的事。Spark、MakerDAO、所有以太坊上的 DeFi 协议都应该参与协调。信任崩塌不分协议，如果这次处理不好，整个 DeFi 的 TVL 会被重新定价，受伤的是所有人。

时间极其宝贵。

Aave 完全可以先承诺兜底，再花时间协调具体方案，这样就能止住挤兑。如果项目方继续沉默，@VitalikButerin 应该出面协调——不需要掏钱，一句「这件事一定会被妥善解决」就够了。

每多沉默一个小时，就有更多资金永久流失。

呼吁 @StaniKulechov @VitalikButerin @AaveDAO @KelpDAO @LayerZero_Core @RuneKek 尽快公开沟通，给市场一个明确信号。

沉默，是最差的选项。

[Cointelegraph @Cointelegraph]

🇩🇪 BIG: Frankfurt stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse invested $200,000,000 in Kraken parent company Payward.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

🇺🇸🇺🇸 Welcome home! 🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Bloomberg @business]

NASA astronauts blasted off Wednesday on a 10-day journey that will slingshot them around the moon, marking humanity’s return to the lunar vicinity for the first time in more than half a century https://t.co/TLqO5w1t9P

[BeInCrypto Español 🗞 @beincrypto_es]

🚨 CaixaBank acaba de obtener licencia MiCA para operar con criptomonedas en España. 🇪🇸

Hace 3 años los bancos españoles decían que cripto era demasiado arriesgado...

Hoy, Caixabank se une a otros bancos como BBVA, Openbank, Kutxabank y Renta 4. ☑️

Más información: ⬇️

[CoinDesk @CoinDesk]

JUST IN: UK challenger bank Monument to tokenize up to £250M in retail deposits on @MidnightNtwrk, marking the first time a UK-regulated bank has tokenized deposits on a public blockchain while keeping them FSCS-protected and interest-bearing.

[Saint Lucia Government @SaintLuciaGov]

The economy expanded in 2025, driven by tourism, construction, and agriculture, while maintaining low inflation and declining unemployment.

[Real World Asset Watchlist @RWAwatchlist_]

BREAKING: SWIFT confirms 25+ banks going live by June, using blockchain for 24/7 cross-border payments.

RWA rails loading. 🚀

source: https://t.co/KJYHY53suu