Stablecoin

On 9 March 2026, stablecoin payments firm KAST disclosed it had raised $80 million in a Series A round, putting its valuation at $600 million after a prior $10 million seed. The company now reports more than 1 million users, nearly $5 billion in annualized transaction volume, and plans to push into North America, Latin America, and the Middle East while rolling out an enterprise cross-border payments product.

Coinbase and Paxos have paid their insurance premiums to Aon using USDC and PYUSD stablecoins, in what is described as a first for a major global insurance broker. Aon processed Coinbase's payment in USDC on Ethereum and Paxos's payment in PYUSD on Solana as part of a proof-of-concept pilot informed by recent U.S. stablecoin legislation.

Stablecoin-focused banking startup Kast has reportedly closed an $80 million funding round that values the company at $600 million. The capital will be used to scale its payment infrastructure and products across North America, Latin America and the Middle East, while stablecoin transfer volume reached a record $1.8 trillion in February.

On March 9, 2026, cryptoasset outflows from Iran's largest exchange Nobitex jumped 700% to nearly $3 million within 48 hours of coordinated US and Israeli military strikes, while overall trading activity slumped. Users who could stay online shifted funds, mainly via Tether's USDT, to foreign exchanges and private wallets as Iran's central bank halted USDT-to-toman pairs and transaction volumes across local platforms fell sharply.

In February, Solana processed about $650 billion in stablecoin transactions, reflecting a major shift in on-chain dollar settlement away from earlier leaders. Over 2024 and 2025, monthly stablecoin volumes climbed toward $1.8 trillion, with USDC and USDT anchoring liquidity and Solana’s low-cost, high-throughput design drawing growing payment and trading flows.

By March 9, 2026, investor Christopher Harborne had given more than £12 million to Reform UK, with regulatory filings showing a £9 million contribution followed by an additional £3 million in November across 2024 and 2025. The party has promoted lower capital gains tax on crypto, begun accepting digital asset donations, and drawn criticism from lawmakers concerned that cryptocurrency-based funding could obscure the origin of political money.

In 2026, the value of tokenized real-world assets rose to about $24.9 billion, roughly four times higher than a year earlier amid strong institutional demand. U.S. Treasuries, commodities, and products from issuers like BlackRock and Ondo Finance led this expansion, while total RWA holders across major chains climbed to over 663,000. Despite a recent monthly pullback, tokenized RWAs still represent more than $346 billion in underlying assets and could surpass $50 billion in value by 2030 if current trends persist.

As digital assets gain adoption, the U.S. Treasury, under the GENIUS Act, has examined tools like AI, digital identity, blockchain analytics, and APIs to detect illicit activity and strengthen oversight, with a particular focus on stablecoins. The report notes that stablecoins represented about 84% of illicit crypto transaction volume in 2025 and cites North Korean-linked hacks totaling an estimated $2.8 billion over two years, alongside $104 billion moved by sanctioned entities in 2025.

In a 32-page report dated March 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department told Congress that crypto mixers can facilitate legitimate financial privacy while also posing notable money-laundering risks. The report disclosed that since May 2020, over $1.6 billion in deposits from mixing services have moved into crypto bridges, with more than $900 million tied to one bridge associated with North Korean laundering activity. Treasury further recommended a digital asset-specific "hold law" to let institutions temporarily freeze suspicious funds and called on lawmakers to clarify which DeFi participants should bear AML and CFT responsibilities.

U.S. lawmakers are advancing measures to restrict Federal Reserve CBDC development as XRP Ledger transactions rebound and tokenization expands. XRP Ledger now processes around 2.5 million daily transactions, with RWA transfer volumes up sharply and RLUSD’s market cap near $1.589 billion, suggesting growing reliance on private blockchain infrastructure. These parallel trends highlight how political resistance to a digital dollar may intersect with the increasing role of XRP-based systems and stablecoins in digital finance.