Stablecoin growth could boost demand for short-term Treasury bills

The Ripple stablecoin treasury has minted 30 million Ripple USD, or RLUSD, adding to a recent series of larger issuance transactions for the USD-pegged token. The 30 million RLUSD mint is the latest in that run of bigger issuances. No further details on the transaction were disclosed.

Institutional stablecoin settlement moved onto four live production rails within a single month, with stablecoin-linked card spending reaching $1.2 billion in September 2026, roughly triple the year-earlier figure, according to PaymentScan data cited by CoinDesk. SoFi and Mastercard went live on September 22 with SoFiUSD, the first stablecoin issued by a U.S. nationally chartered bank deployed for live card-settlement production, with $25 billion in annualized card volume migrating to blockchain-based settlement on Mastercard's global payments network. Visa is already operating at a $20 billion annualized run rate for stablecoin settlement as of September 8, a 15x increase from $1.3 billion a year earlier and up from $7 billion in April, while Stripe announced October 1 that it is expanding its stablecoin card programs to more than 100 countries by year-end, up from 18. The Solana DvP standard, launched October 5-6 with JPMorgan advisory input, cuts settlement finality from T+2 days to roughly 400 milliseconds and cost from $50-500 to less than one cent, though it launched with no production settlement volumes yet. Separately, the DTCC's tokenization service, supported by a working group of over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and State Street, is planned for October launch, and OKX closed a funding extension at a $25 billion pre-money valuation with backing from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and Qube Research.

Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup Inc. is partnering with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up a milestone for the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong said that when he started Coinbase, getting a bank to work with the company at all was nearly impossible, and thanked Citi for the partnership. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing component of Coinbase's revenue; the company shares interest income on the reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group Inc. and monetizes customer balances held on the platform. USDC held in Coinbase products reached an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, accounting for more than 30% of all USDC in circulation.

First Digital Group, the issuer behind the FDUSD stablecoin, has agreed to merge with CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III, known by the ticker KOYN, in a deal that values First Digital at $250M on a pre-money basis. The transaction would take First Digital public on Nasdaq and is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. FDUSD has recorded more than $4.7T in cumulative trading volume as of June 30, 2026, while First Digital generated about $87M in revenue in fiscal 2025. The company said the listing would give it access to public capital to expand Finance District, its on-chain ecosystem, while adding greater transparency for investors and partners.

Crypto asset wallet My Wallet announced on October 6 that it now supports the issuance and redemption procedures for the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYC. Through a tie-up with JPYC's official service JPYC EX, users will be able to carry out, directly from My Wallet, the issuance process of depositing Japanese yen and receiving JPYC, as well as the redemption process of converting held JPYC back into Japanese yen and receiving it in a bank account. Previously, users had to make a reservation on JPYC EX and then return to My Wallet to receive or send the funds, but this integration now allows everything from issuance reservation through receipt, and from redemption reservation through transfer, to be handled seamlessly. When issuing, there is no need to manually enter the destination wallet address, and when redeeming, the reserved amount is automatically reflected on the transfer screen. Use requires account registration and identity verification on JPYC EX as well as registration of a bank account, while screening related to issuance and redemption and the finalization of transactions are handled by JPYC. Regarding JPYC, HashPort Wallet integrated with JPYC EX in July and LINE NEXT's Unifi did so in August, as wallet integrations continue to expand.