Stablecoin

On 4 March 2026, Deloitte issued a reserve attestation for Tether's new U.S. dollar stablecoin USAT, which launched in late January 2026. The report showed $17,604,716 in reserves backing 17,501,391 tokens, with assets held in cash and reverse repos backed by U.S. Treasuries. USAT is structured as a federally compliant alternative to USDT and is positioned to compete with USDC in the U.S. institutional market.

On 02 March, Bitmine Immersion Technologies disclosed that it now holds 4.47 million ETH, valued at about $9.9 billion, representing roughly 3.71% of Ethereum's circulating supply. The firm has staked 68% of its ETH, while on-chain data shows Ethereum's MVRV ratio deeply negative and whales like F2Pool's Chun Wang moving hundreds of millions in stablecoins and ETH across exchanges and DeFi protocols.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC on Tuesday that issuers of stablecoins paying interest on customer balances should be regulated under the same framework as traditional banks. He argued that yield on stored balances is effectively equivalent to bank deposits and must carry identical safeguards, including capital, liquidity, and insurance protections. Dimon's remarks come amid U.S. legislative debate over digital asset rules and contrast with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's call for open competition between banks and crypto platforms.

Coinbase's x402 protocol, launched in May 2025, is an open-source web payment standard that lets AI agents and human users pay with stablecoins directly over the internet. By embedding onchain payment requests into HTTP interactions, it enables fast, low-cost micropayments across networks like Base, Solana and Ethereum without traditional processors. Backed by firms including Cloudflare, Circle, Stripe and Amazon Web Services, x402 is already handling hundreds of millions of transactions for use cases ranging from pay-per-inference compute to metered web content.

On Tuesday, major U.S. equity benchmarks recovered from steep intraday declines, with the S&P 500 ending 0.9% lower after an earlier 2.5% plunge as conflict involving Iran and a spike in oil prices unnerved investors. Bitcoin traded around $68,000 after briefly touching $70,000 on Monday, while Brent crude surged above $87 per barrel and rate-cut expectations were pushed further out.

On Tuesday, United States President Donald Trump criticized banks for blocking progress on the Senate’s crypto market structure legislation over restrictions on stablecoin yield payments. He warned that attempts to undermine the GENIUS Act and delay the CLARITY Act are unacceptable, and urged banks to reach an agreement with the crypto industry. Lawmakers and industry groups remain divided over whether the bill should ban all stablecoin yield, leaving the legislation stalled in the Senate.

As of March 4, 2026, U.S. lawmakers remain divided over whether stablecoin issuers and crypto platforms may provide yield-style incentives to users, leaving the CLARITY Act stuck in the Senate after a strong bipartisan vote in the House. Representative French Hill is urging senators to accept the House-approved language, while traders on platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket are still assigning notable odds that the bill will be enacted in 2026.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump argued that U.S. banks are undermining key crypto legislation by stalling the Clarity Act, following the earlier passage of the GENIUS Act on stablecoins. He warned that disputes over whether stablecoins can offer yield are delaying broader market structure reforms and could drive digital asset activity to China and other jurisdictions. The Clarity Act remains stuck in the Senate as lawmakers, banks and the crypto industry clash over stablecoin rules and their impact on traditional banking.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump used Truth Social to claim that the GENIUS Act, a U.S. stablecoin framework, is being undermined by banks amid a dispute over stablecoin yields. He urged Congress to quickly pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, arguing that Americans should earn more on their money and that the crypto market structure bill must move forward.

Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement pilot while extending its collaboration with Bridge, which is working toward launching stablecoin-linked Visa cards in more than 100 countries by the end of 2026. The initiative lets users spend stablecoin balances at over 175 million merchant locations and tests onchain settlement options via Bridge’s partnership with Lead Bank. The program remains in a pilot phase focused on settlement flexibility and operational efficiency rather than replacing fiat rails.