Stable News is Lumx's weekly curation dedicated to tracking the major moves in stablecoins, digital infrastructure, and the future of global payments.
A neighboring Latin American country began studying the adoption of a stablecoin for national payments, one of the largest stablecoin issuers became a federal bank in the US, the network that connects the world's banks prepared to move tokenized money around the clock, and stablecoin rails gained traction in trading and across Latin America itself. To close, a reflection on why trust and earned media have become assets in the age of AI-powered search.
Bolivia studies adopting USDT in its national payment system
In brief:
The Bolivian government is evaluating the inclusion of Tether's USDT as a payment method in the country, according to newspaper La Razón
The Ministry of Economy cited caution due to the FATF grey list and said it is working on regulation
Between July 2024 and June 2025, Bolivia moved $14.8 billion in crypto transactions, ranking eighth in Latin America
Bolivia has begun evaluating the inclusion of USDT, the largest dollar-backed stablecoin, as a payment method in the country, according to a report by local newspaper La Razón based on a press conference by Economy Minister José Gabriel Espinoza Yáñez. The minister was careful to signal caution, noting that the country is on the FATF grey list and that assets need to be evaluated carefully, and stated that the government is working on rules to govern use by those who have already adopted these currencies, "in many cases out of necessity."
Context helps frame the significance of the move. Bolivia removed its block on crypto transactions in 2024, and between that year and June 2025, moved $14.8 billion in transactions, the eighth-largest volume in Latin America, a region that totaled roughly $1.5 trillion over three years according to Chainalysis. In October 2024, Banco Bisa, one of the country's largest banks, began offering crypto custody services restricted to USDT. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino commented that USDT "is increasingly used as a pillar in various emerging market economies."
The reading fits the map drawn in earlier editions. In emerging markets, stablecoins tend to be less a choice of innovation and more a practical response to dollar access, and the Bolivian case takes that logic to a new level, with a government considering the tokenized dollar as part of official payment infrastructure. It is not a done deal, and the regulatory caution cited by the minister himself shows the path is gradual. But the direction reinforces what the region's adoption data has already been indicating.
Circle receives final approval to operate as a national bank in the US
In brief:
The OCC granted final approval for Circle to establish a national trust bank, bringing USDC's $73.2 billion under a single federal framework
Circle's stock rose roughly 8.4% on the day to $68.40, recovering part of the previous week's decline
The move is part of a wave of banking access being granted to crypto companies under the Trump administration
In the last edition, the arrival of Open USD put pressure on Circle's reserve economics and knocked its stock down. This week, the company advanced on another front, receiving final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank. In practice, the infrastructure underpinning USDC, with $73.2 billion in circulation, moves out of a patchwork of state-level rules and into a single federal framework. The stock rose roughly 8.4% on the day to $68.40, recovering a significant portion of the 16% decline it suffered when OUSD was announced.
As tracked since edition #133, the GENIUS Act unlocked a path for crypto companies to access banking charters, and the line is moving: Sony Bank signaled conditional OCC approval on Thursday, on its way to its own dollar stablecoin, and in December Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos received similar treatment. Not everyone is on board: Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued that the charters were granted improperly, while industry groups have pushed back. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire summed up the objective as building "a new fundamental monetary layer for the internet," and said the company will offer digital asset and tokenized securities custody through the bank.
The reading that matters for those building infrastructure is one of convergence. The same Coinbase that celebrated Circle's charter, with whom it shares interest revenue from USDC reserves, was one of the more than 140 companies that backed OUSD last month. The issuer responds to competitive pressure by becoming a regulated bank, while its own partners bet on alternatives. It is the portrait of a market in which the line between stablecoin issuer and bank grows thinner by the day, and in which competition and collaboration happen simultaneously among the same names.
SWIFT prepares ledger to move tokenized money 24/7
In brief:
17 banks across six continents will pilot the exchange of tokens representing deposits on SWIFT's "blockchain-based ledger"
Participants include systemically important institutions such as Citi, HSBC, BNY, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, UBS, and Wells Fargo
The tokens move overnight and on weekends, but final settlement still depends on legacy systems during banking hours
SWIFT, the cooperative that has connected thousands of banks for decades, announced that 17 institutions across six continents will participate in a pilot to exchange tokens representing deposits. Among the participants are banks classified as systemically important by the Financial Stability Board, including BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, HSBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, and Wells Fargo. The ledger allows tokenized deposits to move "overnight and on weekends", precisely the continuous operation characteristic discussed in the context of Mastercard's stablecoin settlement in edition #134.
There is an important caveat in the design. Final settlement in fiat currency still runs through traditional systems during banking hours, meaning the promise of "always-on" money applies to the transfer layer, not to definitive settlement. The architecture is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, but the network remains largely centralized: SWIFT operates a shared environment while each bank retains authority over its own assets. The cooperative itself highlighted that it built the product in nine months.
The strategic reading is that of an incumbent adopting blockchain on its own terms. Networks like the XRP Ledger and, more recently, Canton have positioned themselves as faster and cheaper alternatives to SWIFT's stack, and the cooperative's response is to incorporate the efficiency of tokenization without relinquishing the control and compliance that banks already know. For those operating cross-border payments, the message is that the modernization of traditional rails and the expansion of stablecoins have stopped being parallel trajectories and are now competing for the same ground, money that moves at any hour.
TradFi perpetuals settled in stablecoins exceed $1.1 trillion, says Binance Research
In brief:
Perpetual contracts linked to traditional financial assets and settled in stablecoins totaled more than $1.1 trillion in H1 2026
30% of Binance users now hold more than half their portfolio in stablecoins, up from 4% in 2020
In Latin America, the share of Binance users making stablecoin transfers more than doubled, from 17% (2025) to 38% (2026)
Binance Research reported that perpetual contracts tied to traditional financial assets and settled in stablecoins surpassed $1.1 trillion in volume in the first half of 2026, equivalent to roughly 11% of all crypto perpetuals volume in the first five months of the year. The figure reinforces the thesis that stablecoins have consolidated as the preferred settlement layer for tokenized TradFi markets as well. Worth connecting to the last edition: Visa's adjusted stablecoin volume hit a record $1.79 trillion in June, and the total market rose to around $311 billion, up from $254 billion a year earlier.
The report also shows that usage extends well beyond trading. According to Binance, 30% of the exchange's users now hold more than half of their portfolio in stablecoins, up from just 4% in 2020, a signal that the asset has begun functioning as a store of value rather than merely a temporary trading instrument. It is the same behavioral shift observed on the corporate side, now also appearing in retail.
The point that resonates most for those operating in the region is Latin America. The Latin American share among Binance's stablecoin transfer users more than doubled, from 17% in 2025 to 38% in 2026, driven by demand for faster and cheaper international transfers. The data connects with a Bitso report cited in the research, according to which dollar stablecoins accounted for 40% of crypto purchases on the platform in 2025, surpassing Bitcoin's 18% for the first time. A former Bybit executive estimates that remittance corridors outside the US-Mexico axis represent a $112 billion opportunity, and traditional providers have already moved, with Western Union launching USDPT and MoneyGram launching MGUSD. The reading is direct: real adoption in Latin America has stopped being a promise and become the data point that supports the thesis.
Worth Reading
For anyone running a newsletter, email list, or any owned channel, this data-driven breakdown, based on real behavior, not surveys, deserves attention.
Email Love analyzed 79,235 marketing emails sent by 4,346 brands in Q2 2026, signing up for the lists themselves rather than asking professionals what they think they do. Some findings dismantle old playbooks: the weekend "dead zone" is over (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday now nearly tie on volume, and Monday has become the quietest day); subject lines have shortened to an average of 35.7 characters and grown calmer (exclamation point use dropped from 17.4% to 12.4%); and archive volume rose 24.8% year-over-year, but driven by new brands entering, with established ones maintaining stable cadences.
The connection to the stablecoin ecosystem is the discipline of measuring real behavior. The report insists that "the global average is lying to you" and that the number that matters is the one for your sector, not the aggregate, exactly the same care that Visa's adjusted methodology applies when filtering bots from stablecoin volume. At any layer, from email to payments, the useful reading comes from counting what actually happened, not the average that sounds good.
→ Read
Story of the Week
In the age of AI-powered search, the credibility you cannot buy has become the asset that decides whether your brand appears.
An article by Abigail Niziankiewicz of Mediassociates, published in Marketing Dive, argues that earned media has stopped being a brand bonus and become a prerequisite for being recommended by AI systems. The numbers in the piece help convey the urgency: 37% of consumers already begin their searches with AI tools rather than Google or Bing, 60% of searches end without a click, and when an AI Overview appears, clicks on the first organic result fall by roughly a third. On the flip side, traffic arriving via AI converts up to four times more than traditional organic traffic.
The mechanism described is what makes the story interesting. According to the author, AI does not reward popularity, it rewards probability: every claim a brand makes about itself receives a kind of "trust score," calculated from backlinks, press coverage, domain authority, and third-party mentions. AI systems are reportedly three times more likely to cite content from premium publishers than content from the brand itself, which transforms editorial coverage, forums, and community discussion into authority signals, not decoration.
The logic maps directly onto the world of payments. In finance, as in search, credibility is the asset that cannot be bought in bulk: it accumulates through audits, regulatory track record, transparent reserves, and the consistency with which infrastructure delivers on its promises. The same question the author poses to marketers applies to those building programmable money: what does the world independently confirm about you, and is that enough to be recommended? In practice, trust has become infrastructure, and infrastructure has always been a matter of trust.
→ Read
Further Reading: AI, markets, and the surrounding infrastructure
A few noteworthy stories worth checking out:
OpenAI changes the prompting game in GPT-5.6: stop over-writing and define the destination
Anthropic: Claude's personality changes depending on the model and the language you speak
Christopher Nolan says younger audiences are "rejecting" AI slop
Meta tests smart glasses that record everything, all the time
Trust Is the New SEO: Kevin Indig on brand, trust, and search behavior in the AI era (video)
From Bolivia studying USDT as official payment infrastructure to SWIFT tokenizing deposits for 17 global banks, stablecoin infrastructure is now competing for space in both emerging markets and the heart of the traditional financial system.
This was Stable News, a weekly curation to keep you up to date on the latest stablecoin developments around the globe.
